Will a USB Floppy Drive Work on Linux for Playing Old DOS Games?

If you go the route of using a USB floppy drive, you can create images of your floppy disks to use in a virtual machine, such as VirtualBox or VMware. This allows you to run DOS within that environment, making it easier to access the old game files.

Connecting a USB floppy drive usually isn’t complicated—it’s mainly about drivers and compatibility. But just a heads up, running MS-DOS games directly on Linux can be tricky. You might need an emulator instead, like DOSBox, which is designed for that.

I tried using a USB floppy drive with Linux a couple of years back, and while it worked fine, I can't remember exactly what I was trying to achieve. Just a warning that if you’re looking for the real deal, you may face some compatibility issues with older hardware.

There's a lot of nostalgia around collecting these old games on floppy, but honestly, you might want to just use emulators instead. I found Mortal Kombat 1 playable online through a browser, so that’s an option, too!

Yep, USB floppy drives generally work on Linux! They’re usually plug and play, so you shouldn’t run into many issues there. However, the success of reading the floppy disks themselves might vary depending on factors like the drive type and how the disks were formatted.