Hi all, I'm new to Linux, my primary system is an IBM T30 laptop. My questions are:
1. How do I get the floppy drive to be recognized by my system?(My computer has swappable bays for the cd and floppy, can not be used at the same time, it seems like Linux does not recognize the floppy, I'm booting up from the cd and must then remove the cd drive to try and get the floppy to be recognized.
2. How do I copy a file?(I can't copy files to the cd drive neither)

I've been trying to work with Linux for about a month and keep getting very frustrated with it. I took a short break from it, and now I'm trying again. I've been working with Windows for a couple of years and it seems like second nature to me, I would like to one day have the same level of ease with Linux.
By the way, I'm using Suse Linux 8.1 Pro.

as root
for floppy
#modprobe floppy
#mkdir /mnt/floppy
#mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
#ls /mnt/floppy

for cd
#mount /mnt/cdrom
#ls /mnt/cdrom

http://www.linux-laptop.net/
http://www.msu.edu/~pfaffben//t30.html
http://www.jeo.net/T30/

I've tried what you said and still no luck. I'm totally new to this and have no idea what I'm doing. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. My system won't recognize the floppy or the cd rom. I get an error that says "no device found" or something like that.

Please help, I almost feel like giving up on Linux.

you have to create device file then.

check if u have /dev/hdc , if not create it
mknod /dev/hdc b 22 0


also for floppy
mknod /dev/fd0 b 2 0

then modprobe(load module for floppy) and mount

I get confused cause I don't know what those commands mean, is there a place on the net to figure out what the most popular and used commands are?

I'm going to try this, I'll let you know if it works.

BTW thanks for the help.

If you're confused about commands, head over to a Barnes & Noble or Borders and check out their books on Linux. I have a few and they have been very helpful. You could probably get all the information from the web but I like books.

some of members here have good intro tutorials on linux
you can check out those..

my 2cents are start with easy ones, don't try to understand everything in one time
good luck