hi! serious problems with 8gb usb zap drive

hi, i have a problem, it might just be me being windows damaged, but anyways...
when i insert my 8gb usb flash drive, it pops up in file manager, but i cannot format, i cannot read, i cannot write, i basically cannot do anything with it, and i cannot find any solution on what to do, and seriousley, inserting a usb drive and using it SHOULD NOT require half an hour in terminal just to be able to put a file on it, what the h*ll am i doing wrong? or is it just linux (fedora8) that is totally useless?
i initially found linux quite interesting, but after facing all these problems that i have never even heard of before has got med balanceing on the rims of changing back to XP...
so, how do i format, and change the permissions for the usb drive to make it both read and writeable?

and another thing, have managed to install ff3, vlc, compis fusion and got them all working, but i cannot play video, just to darn laggy, i am using vlc for media playback, anyone know of any fix or workaround to make the videos playback lag-free? (avi files)

i have the 8 gig ssd model, 1 gig ram, fully updated fedora 8

anyone who can help a total n00b? plz? =)

 

I have a shed-full of Linux systems and none of them have any problems reading or writing USB sticks, or in playing video smoothly. My question to you is: do you really want to investigate these problems with a view to solving them, or do you just want to complain about Linux not being like Windows? I doubt there are any magic solutions to your problems -- most likely they will need patient investigation and it might take a few days, especially if your only source of support is this forum. On the other hand, re-installing Windows might only take a couple of hours.

Your choice, really.

In any case, if you've installed Fedora Core 8, then you'd get better support from a Fedora forum. The issue is not specific to the AAO, because mine has no problems in this area (running the stock Linpus). And there are a lot more FC8 users out there than there are AAO owners. Just a thought.

 

it doesn't.

It's really hard to tell from the limited description of the problem you've given.

I doubt it. I have Fedora 8, 9, and what will become 10 installed on my desktop PC (my AA1 only has the Fedora 10 beta), and in all cases, inserting a formatted USB stick causes the filesystem to mount automatically and accept any files that I transfer to it.

whatever floats your boat
[quote[so, how do i format, and change the permissions for the usb drive to make it both read and writeable?[/quote:11muwyq8][/quote:11muwyq8]
A reasonable question. To answer your question, you can format your USB stick (or your SSD for that matter; be careful!) by running fdisk as root in a terminal window. Note that if the master boot record on your USB stick is screwed up, fdisk isn't going to help. Normally, USB sticks are formatted with a FAT16 or FAT32 filesystem On all of my Fedora, Ubuntu, Puppy, and Linpus systems my USB sticks are automatically mounted read/write. To see if your USB stick is mounting properly, open a terminal window and type "mount" (without the quotes) then press the enter key. Show us your results.