You are correct, VFAT does not have the concept of owner, so Linux provides one. If you don't specify differently, that will be root. (more likely, it will be whoever executed the mount command - which usually must be root.) However, the mount command can be passed parameters that will set the GID and UID of a vfat-mounted partition. I don't recall the exact syntax - check man for mount. This is what is happening in the background when you use the linuxconf to set DOS settings. The problems with saving files are trickier - the saving program (e.g. SO) attempts to set the _file_ ownership, which is not possible with vfat - everything on the partition has the same immutable UID and GID. I'll bet that you and your kids aren't logged in simultaneously, so it should be possible to have the partition remounted with the appropriate user's UID as part of the login process. Not sure off-hand what the best file to modify would be though. Some care is required though, since root privilege is probably needed for the mount part...
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