Hi All, Romain Dolbeau wrote:
Debian is (at least up to now) the Linux distribution one could rely on to support hardware as long as its actual life without forcing users to upgrade. I have ~2007 (Penryn) systems still in use that were deployed with Debian when new, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, just upgrade Debian:-) Debian isn't Microsoft. Debian isn't Apple. Debian isn't Google. Please don't learn the wrong lessons from them. Planned obsolescence is bad, not good.
I stand to Romain. Long-term support also means less electronic waste, less consumism. 10 years might be for a laptop - although a good number now shows 20 years can be done if they were a lucky model, but certain embedded boards, servers are still working very well. Think about ThinkPad T series, PowerMac G3 & G4, Sun UltraSPARC system.
Of course, certain pieces of software may be not useful with limited RAM or single-core CPUs, but others to perfectly fine.
Main issue is of course Kernel, toolchain and for laptops & workstations, video card support.
Riccardo