been working on computers since 1979, one of the hardest issues is hardware becomming unsuported , even though hardware is given a industry ideal expected life by manufacturers this is not the real world figures there guesses based on macines sold that are expected to replace what was previously sold , in most cases the actual number of machienes over the 10 years of age still in use is not a known figure and if it was passed on to someone that still uses it or failed and became e waste , anyway a pdp11/03 was installed as a city traffic light controler back in the 70's dec , it was not untill 2021 that it was replaced by a new system (at a cost of 15 milion) almost 50 years of in service active use , ok so not this issue , but you need to look at why it was not replaced earlyer hardware compatabilaty as it used custom i/o cards as well as custom software the same issues affect pc's though and no one has tuched on this in this descusion and this is verry important firstly you may have an old 586 machine still running , but why should you need to well here are the reasons 1/.isa card slots (ie for some obscure control monitoring card) process control or old programming hardware 2/. it still has a floppy port (hay i got lots of data still on 3.5" disks or even 5.25 or 8" disks with a cable adaptor 3/. obsolete i/o port standards (i know for example using a usb to parallel printer support fails when using parallel printer port stepper drivers because of usb lag (you need a proper inbult port for it )) 4/. it just works and does the job it was commisioned to do now its fair to say a 586 is not ideal these days , but if it fails you need to replace it , and heres the issue if it fails in 2 or more years time , then i would find that most v2 systems dont have the older i/o , many v0 v1 systems dont have isa for example and and almost none of the v2 dropping v0 v1 support is going to cut out old data recovery since a lot of v2,3&4 systems dont offer a floppy port that excludes the abilaty to recover old data from not only floppies but some of the old tape backup drives making those that need to looking for machines pre v0,1 older and harder to find not to mention the whole issue of power consumption same for those that need to have the abilaty to use isa i/o cards or even ide to recover files from a old hdd although it seems minor as those users may also have newer machines on hand , if they cant get a os to work then there screwed it may be fair to say they could use an historic archive for the os like say https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1lR6JUARnlTSEh8GicWI3Ptll8aLJ-K4X?usp... (linux for machines circa 1996) but in this day and age it would not be advisable to use on a actave internet connected machine as its not patched and this is the other issue users v0 v1 will face , if support is dropped , securaty updates , those users would be left with no option but to fall back onto some archive that is nolonger maintained , because upgrading the hardware is not an option and in todays internet connected age securaty and patches are a big issue especialy since it seems to be the tend to drop leased line /rf links and connect them to the internet instead so they cant be secure or air gaped ! the main issue of dropping v0/v1 support is not just the hole it leaves but the fact its gong to make v0/v1 64bit hardware unsuported forcing the v0/1 users to revert to 32 bit archives as it seems the intent to drop it without having a fallback v0/1 legacy distro at the same time im all for optimisation support for v3,v4 and whatever next , but it cant be done by dropping support for those that depend on v0&1 support in the same way we still have 586 and 32 bit support and there is still a need for that also but as i pointed out its not all ways the cpu type that is important but the i/o the motherboard offers its fair to say ram requirement may be an issue on old machines but where hardware i/o is the issue a v0 or 1 system is more prefrable to a 586 system if the mobo will support it that v2,3and 4 systems nolonger support and where custom systems have been put in like machine monitoring and control they can only be replaced by those machines that still support the "special" expantion hardware yes there are still companies that pay server hall fees for there vax11/780 (running for what i dont know but prob because they have bespoke software on it maybe in fortran or cobol) also in terms of future sails (for business use ) keeping support is also good marketing for those that build new systems for such tasks knowing there going to be supported for a long time not just the 10 year expected pc life span , but control systems that may be expected to have a 50 year plus lifespan , scrapping a desktop pc because it wont support the latest windows is not as big a "e waste" issue as having to scrap the whole 30 million dollar autimated pick and place warehouse and i/o cards and equipment (a few hundered thousand tons of "e waste")that it was controling just because its nolonger supported and cant continue as its "unsafe to have it have it unpatched"