I think it would be really cool if there were a Linux distro out there, possibly based on an older kernel, X server, etc. designed to work with deprecated software and hardware, while still patching some of the security exploits fixed in later kernels and such.

For a while I had a laptop that was too slow for Windows 7, but also had graphics hardware too old for acceleration under Linux, and since Windows XP had just ended support at the time, I was kind of stuck in a weird spot. 😜 That laptop has long since been trashed, which is a shame as it served me well for a little while, but I still have an even older laptop in storage that had similar problems. It's in decent-ish shape too, so I'm thinking if I ever get it up and working again that I'll dual-boot a lightweight Linux distro on it as well as 98SE(!) just for running games. It ran XP originally, but it's still a bit heavy for my liking, and it's too much of a target for security vulnerabilities, so for stuff that requires Windows I may as well run a version that doesn't even support the onboard wifi.

Along with getting really crappy old laptops up and working, I could also imagine something would be nice for running things like the original boxed Linux versions of Unreal Tournament and whatnot.

Mr bigmouth I've found that people have very relative definition of what is an old computer. is it a 386, 1mb ram and 80mb hdd, a 486xwith 8mb ram and 212mb hdd? or a pentium60... whatever ... The point at running old computer is to support soundcards like the "gus" and the "awe" so you can listen to hardware modle players !