The average PC is kept for 6 years meaning people would be expecting to use this new computer they just received say tomorrow as late as 2027. A minority of machined will remain in service as long as 12 years
Historically for most of recent history Linux and Windows both continued to run on machines that were previously supported for much longer than 4 years subject to the machines capability to keep up with present software. For example not all hardware released in the XP era had vista drivers but not only did most XP machines work OK with vista if they had sufficient ram to run but whereas there weren't many machines sold with XP after 2006 MS provided updates to XP for another 8 years.
This means that machines sold in 2006 were either in the OK to update to vista camp or in the OK to stick with XP camp until they were rendered permanently insecure after no less than 8 years of service with machine capable of running vista mostly being capable of upgrading to 7 as well for another 6 years of service.
Even when an old machine has been necessarily retired by the shifting winds of software it normally has been due to being incapable hardware or oems not providing the means to keep moving forward.
It is unprecedented in Microsoft or Linux land for such a monkey wrench to put put in the works. It seems likely that they will end up having to move the date back to allow a greater portion of machines sold including as we speak with incompatible hardware to age out.
This is a link to a PC sold as new in box with a 7th generation intel cpu.
https://www.newegg.com/platinum-microsoft-surface-laptop-jkq...
The average PC is kept for 6 years meaning people would be expecting to use this new computer they just received say tomorrow as late as 2027. A minority of machined will remain in service as long as 12 years
Historically for most of recent history Linux and Windows both continued to run on machines that were previously supported for much longer than 4 years subject to the machines capability to keep up with present software. For example not all hardware released in the XP era had vista drivers but not only did most XP machines work OK with vista if they had sufficient ram to run but whereas there weren't many machines sold with XP after 2006 MS provided updates to XP for another 8 years.
This means that machines sold in 2006 were either in the OK to update to vista camp or in the OK to stick with XP camp until they were rendered permanently insecure after no less than 8 years of service with machine capable of running vista mostly being capable of upgrading to 7 as well for another 6 years of service.
Even when an old machine has been necessarily retired by the shifting winds of software it normally has been due to being incapable hardware or oems not providing the means to keep moving forward.
It is unprecedented in Microsoft or Linux land for such a monkey wrench to put put in the works. It seems likely that they will end up having to move the date back to allow a greater portion of machines sold including as we speak with incompatible hardware to age out.