One project that I keep coming back to again and again is keeping my circa 2011 netbook functional. It was my main computer for most of grad school, and it seems silly that a perfectly functional bit of hardware (for documents, spreadsheets, etc.) like that doesn't work well.

What I've found is mainstream distros seem to have no respect for aging hardware. Especially if they're desktop-focused. I have had some success with Trisquel[0], netBSD, and FreeDOS. I'm confident I could get Gentoo working if I'm picky about ebuild selection and build everything on a more modern computer, but that does sort of feel like it defeats the purpose. Another option would be maybe to install a version of a mainstream distro from 2011, with the caveat that I'd only be able to install software included on the installation media. Debian Squeeze repos are long gone.

I feel like I shouldn't have to stray so far from the beaten path to do something on a computer from 2011 that I could do comfortably on a Packard Bell in 1992.

[0] On recommendation from an FSF employee. Hardware that can run free software top-to-bottom tends to skew a little older, so Trisquel needs to run well on older hardware.