Isn't this where Linux excels?
I still remember when I plugged it in into a Ubuntu 8.04 laptop in 2009 and Ubuntu told me nothing about it. Trained by years of Windows and countless popups and notifications I assumed it didn't work. I even looked for Linux drivers then I tried the OS scanner program: the driver was already in the kernel and the scanner was working, no need to bother me with messages. I never had problems with anything else (printers, webcams, etc).
On the sad side, my laptop from 2006 is still working (actually it's resting in a drawer most of the time) but it can't use a kernel more recent than some old 3.x version because anything newer won't support its ATI X1600 graphic card. I should try to boot it from a 19.10 USB stick but I'm not confident that somebody bothered to readd support for something that was dropped along the way.
Just in case you need a silly project for the holiday season...
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1791312
I'll give it a try. Thank you!
I also have a younger relative using a 2008 Dell d630 for all his schoolwork, running Ubuntu 16.04. Again, the old Nvidia Quadro worked out of the box.
Of course if you need proprietary or old out of tree modules the story gets worse, but most interesting hardware I’ve plugged in works without me needing to worry about the details, in my experience.
There are LTS releases committed to supporting the 32-bit OS for several years to come, but the writing is on the wall: They have entered the long twilight of no official support, but still working if you can hack it together.
On the other hand, if your old hardware is used for games, there's probably some game emulator to help :)