Win98 -- all kidding aside

[Mario Vukelic]

On Thu, 2008-07-31 at 16:59 -0500, Jimmy Montague wrote:
> Well, I did just as you suggested: I now have "floppy formatter" in my
> system tools menu. When I unmount the fdd, I click Applications --
> System Tools -- Floppy Formatter and I get a dialog window.
> 
> I select the floppy type, the format I want, type in a name for the
> disk, click format and, after about thirty seconds, I get an adamant
> system lock. Force reboot with the reset button, try the same thing
> using a different floppy disk, and get the same result. So much for
> floppy formatter, I guess.

That sucks, but without more info there is nothing I can do. As I said,
I cannot replicate this myself because I lack a floppy drive. I found
six bugs filed for the floppy formatter ("gfloppy"), maybe something
there is of help: 
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/+bugs?field.searchtext=gfloppy&search=Search+Bug+Reports&field.scope=all&field.scope.target=

> By the way, I saw your post suggesting that I should try Kubuntu. 
> In fact I been there, did that last week. Inside my Ubuntu system, I
> downloaded a Kubuntu disk image and burned it onto a CD. Then I powered
> down and booted from the CD. I saw a menu that offered me options,
> including "install" and "verify cd". I figured I should verify the cd
> before attempting an install, and so I did. Kubuntu install said the
> disk was perfect. So I clicked "install." At the 22 percent line on the
> progress slider, I got an adamant system freeze. I walked away and left
> it for two hours. At the end of that time, it was still frozen. So I
> powered down and tried again. At the 22 percent line on the progress
> slider, I got ANOTHER adamant system freeze. So much for Kubuntu.
> 
> I wiped the hdd, reinstalled Ubuntu, and (one week later) here we are.
> 
> I am discouraged. My temper groweth shorter daily.

I can understand your frustration, but either you are very unlucky, or
your system has a hardware problem of some sort, or you are doing
something wrong (unlikely in this case, I guess). I haven't installed
Kubuntu in a long time and generally don't follow its development, so
I'm not really qualified to say anything about this problem. Maybe some
of the Kubuntu users on the list can enlighten us. (There is also a
dedicated Kubuntu list).