Just noticed, I can not do ANYTHING with my floppy drive under the KDE GUI! Attempting to read it, I am told that it can not be mounted, try to format the exact same disk (yes it has something on it, but noting I actually need, just testing things) I am told that the device seems to be busy, and try unmounting the device before formatting (grrrrr!)....
However, use GNOME instead, and the floppy drives works just the way you would expect it to.
Both conditions hold true regardless of what user tries it, this includes the root user.
Is there some sort of fix for this?

I just stuck in a floppy to see if it would work on my debian box had to go to system /storage media and mount it--no problems . so if you can mount with gnome but not with kde you probably have a package missing somewhere. I looked into my synaptic and apart from the gnome-utils I have kfloppy and kwikdisk. If you don't have 'em try installing if you do then I'm stumped.I haven't had a floppy in the drive for few years!