This was certainly true until recently when Microsoft went all Windows 11, which only works on a small, whitelisted subset of X86-compatible CPUs and also mandated TPM 2.0.
Now only Linux offers semi-guaranteed support for older hardware.
Also Microsoft provides an official guide on how to install Windows 11 on older hardware. My neighbor has Windows 11 on his 10 year old laptop running an i7 2500 and it's butter smooth.
So is OS X Big Sur[1] and Monterey[2]
For the majority of people all they need to do is pull their finger out and upgrade the OS from Catalina to Big Sur or Monterey.
[1]https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211238
[2]https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212551Modern computers should last a lot longer than that, especially if you can pass them on to users with less demanding requirements.
And fortunately Macs do last longer than that, but you have to install Linux or Windows to keep them up to date.
> Name me one widely deployed OS that promises its users patches ad-infinitum.
> Microsoft certainly doesn't patch all older versions of Windows.
> Neither do all the widely deployed Linux flavours.
But the latest and greatest Windows and Linux releases are installable on older devices.
I extended the life of a 2011 iMac which stopped recieving updates from Apple by installing the latest Fedora.
Most Linux distributions draw the line at 32 bit hardware.
Windows 11 was controversial in that it dropped support for older computers. But this shows what the expectations are.