@jbouchez

That's exactly what I did in my old PC (~2004) that is no longer here because the motherboard was dead and no replacements were available in my region. I've installed Ubuntu in 2015 instead of "trading it in or recycling it with local organizations" as MS advised when Windows XP was out of support on April 8th, 2014, then Debian circa 2019 because my AMD Athlon XP 1500+ didn't support 64-bit.

I liked the experience as a power user.