I'll admit, the project started out as a strange search to find the latest Linux distro that would run reasonably on a 486. That's why the Slack 11 hard drive image is provided - it's the result of my search. However, hearing a floppy drive churn and realizing a boot loader is short made the conjunction in my head click: OMG my daughters need to understand this!
I also admit that Slack 11 is my own personal opinion given hardware constraints. Others have performed a similar search.