Creating a FAT16 partition on an SD card can be a bit of a hassle in a Linux only environment. My CnM Book uses a version of Busybox that does not provide mkfs, but it does provide mkfs.minix which only creates minix format partitions. Odd since the SD slot will not read these.
Linux Suse on my main machines is a bit temperamental about writing to SD cards it has formatted itself. (slot in printer and also USB multi-reader device.)
However Puppy Linux, using the GParted tool, is very reliable and cards formatted by it are readable on all boxes I've got - x386, i686, PowerPC RISC, ARM and MIPS. No need to set up a machine, just download a Puppy .ISO file, burn to DVD or CD and boot from your optical device when you want to manage cards or other USB devices.