This is one of the things I love about Linux. There was an announcement at the end of 2012 that kernel will no longer support 386 chip - after 21 years! And distributions will ship older kernels for many additional years.

Compare that to MS and Apple forcing new versions of OS (and in Apple's case, hardware) on its users... I can understand their position, but it is still frustrating for the users. I find Windows XP superior to both Vista and Windows 7 (not to mention "Lego" Windows).