As someone who's been around the block a few hundred times with technology, one of the things that have always bugged me the most is what is called "planned obsolescence." What this means is that software and hardware vendors seem to make sure consumers are going to have to eventually purchase new hardware because the software they need won't run on old systems.
- How to open websites as apps with Firefox on Linux [1]
- Linux 101: How to create a zip file in Linux [2]
- How to use the scp command in Linux [3]
- How to install Linux applications from the command line [4]
- How to enable Linux on your Chromebook (and why you should) [5]
Consider this: When Microsoft released Windows 11, it became all too clear that a lot of hardware (capable of running the previous iteration) wouldn't support the new version of Windows. That was problematic (at best) and expensive (at worst). A lot of people wound up having to purchase new systems (if they wanted to stick with Windows). For some, that wasn't an option, so they had to keep using a Windows operating system that would eventually fall out of support.
On top of this, several modern operating systems aren't exactly friendly to older hardware. If you've found yourself in such a situation, there's hope by way of a handful of Linux distributions that have been designed specifically for older hardware. With these operating systems, you can revive old hardware and make it run as though it were new.
Let me introduce you to five such Linux distributions, each of which is perfectly at home on new and older hardware.