“With all of the emphasis on desktop and enterprise Linux
expansion lately, one of the traditional strengths of Linux has
been forgotten and all but abandoned by many of the newer Linux
distributions: the ability to run well on older, legacy hardware.
It was once possible to say that Linux would run well on an 80386
PC with 16 megabytes of memory.
“Clearly, this is no longer the case — at least not for current
versions of Linux in the desktop workstation sense. Just try
installing a 2.2 kernel with XFree86 3.3.4 and KDE 1.1 on an 80386
PC with unaccelerated video and only 300 megabytes of disk space.
You won’t get far — an older PC just can’t cut it when it comes to
today’s Linux distributions and desktops.
“If you find yourself needing to hang on to one or a series
of those old SVGA 386 and low-end 486 machines, there is an
answer: use an older Linux distribution for these older
machines.”