In some installations users might not, by default, have access to the floppy drive. Generally the floppy device (/dev/fd0) belongs to group floppy and the administrator may need to add a user to this group to grant them access. This can be done simply with the Gnome interface from Applications-->System Tools-->Users and Groups. Refer to Chapter 42 for details on managing groups. Alternatively, from the command line the following has the same effect:
# adduser kayon floppy