Setting up a new system. Two deciding features for me:

1. Very important, will go to old releases if necessary: Will support real floppy disk drive. NOT USB. Tell me where to get a USB drive for 5-1/4 floppies and I will change my mind on this.

2. This would be nice but is not essential: Will work with Amazon Prime Video and Firefox out of the box.

Thanks for any suggestions.

I'm gonna vote Slackware 14.2

Any distro should do that. I'm using Xubuntu and the moment and I can see the repository has fdutils available. That adds various extras facilities and they warn that it only works with real drives, not usb ones. Just get a live disk of the distro you fancy and make sure it recognises your floppy drive.

AntiX or MX Linux would be my suggestions.

If you need something smaller, take a look at Tiny Core Linux or SliTaz.

(Or maybe Puppy Linux.)

Just try a few. Really, it's the only way to know and you will gain an understanding of the way Linux works (and doesn't) in the process. Until you've installed a few distro's you'll not really be equiped to troubleshoot any issues and you'll miss out on a lot of fun, and annoyance.

Slackware I can't disagree with, Xubuntu or just plain Ubuntu -- both really -- should be tried also. Try plain Debian and see what you think. Manjaro and others bring new experiences.

Really, just try a few. linux isn't worth the move unless you want to take some time to learn and work out what you like and don't.

Where the heck are you finding a new motherboard that supports real floppies?

[QUOTE=2damncommon;6010301]Where the heck are you finding a new motherboard that supports real floppies?[/Q]

ASROCK N68-GS4/USB3 FX. Not quite bleeding edge!

I assume this is related to this?

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...9/#post6008721

You don't need permanent floppy support. Just burn a boot USB/DVD/CD and use it to get the data off the floppies.