Well, unix has evolved considerably, via the linux branch of the family
tree. Removable media are now detected and mounted automatically upon
insertion.

The floppy access ought to just work, if root can access them then it's
a permissions issue. If you want to access them as FAT formatted
floppies, mtools is the easiest way. mformat, mcopy, and other commands
from dos with a prepended m are used for the i/o operations.