Mrs Hairychested has installed Xubuntu on her laptop. When you insert the card it isn't seen. Anybody knows what to do?

First thing to check is if the kernel is seeing the card. Run a "dmesg | tail -20" before & a few seconds after the card is inserted. If it's a memory card (SDHC etc) & it's supported then you'll probably see some mention of an mmc device.

Hairy – do either of you know owt about Linux? If not, you could be in for a steep learning curve 🙂

Woody, nowt or less 😀
I've been using Ubuntu for some 6 months without major problems now (email, web, facebook), way better than Windows Vista.
She's chosen Xbuntu as it's even smaller.
None of us needs the computer for serious stuff. Open Office, Firefox, MP3 player and not much more.
It's like riding a singlespeed 69er. Why? Why not?

It's the one problem with all the Linux distros – great until something doesn't quite work, then it's a world of pain trying to sort it out 🙂

You're going to have to start by doing what graham suggests – open a terminal, and run the dmesg|tail command shortly after inserting the card – google any error messages you see. You may or not need to run the command using sudo (admin privileges for normal user).

Ah. 🙂

In that case you might have more success using one of those "all-in-one" USB card readers, or stick the card in a camera/media player & connect that using USB.

GrahamB, I took the card and stuck it into my PC, it works. The laptop might need looking at, there is a fella in my local computer shop who doesn't charge for diagnosing so why not?
As for the problems with Linux and its quirks, nothing can be comparable to Vista. At least the boot-up takes half a minute, things tend to work quickly, less hassle overall.