[Rant] Newer kernels often degrade performance on older hardware

The topic might appear to be controversial or even pedantic and outrageous to some but I implore you to hear me out. The whole narrative or buzz around IT these days (not just pertaining to Linux) is about perpetually living on the cutting edge and always using the "modernest" gadgets and gizmos.

Very little narrative space, if any, is granted to retro tech, or users of older hardware who may not have the inclination to upgrade devices on every new moon for whatever reasons, they could be as diverse as budget constraints, a preference for stability or even a preference for nostalgia.

I think part of the problem arises due to the fact that Linux is this one kernel trying to cater to everything under the Sun right from satellites to servers to PCs to androids and IoT devices. Ideally, there should be sub-divisions or families of kernels specific to each one of these diverse kinds of devices?

Nevertheless, at least in the PCLinux world, I'm sure most of you must have observed a noticeable decline in performance and corresponding increase in RAM usage on your laptops as you start moving from 4.x to 5.x to 6.x kernel branches? While newer kernels usually adhere to the "don't break userland" principle and often stay compatible with older hardware, the care and testing time is never given to them and it often results in bugs like these.

This bug in the open source i915 driver, like many others, cause some older machines (in this case, 7th/8th generation Intel chip laptops like my Dell Latitude 7490) to actually break and result in kernel panic. The resulting technological obsolescence in this manner keeps the big tech corporate happy, but open source folks should stay away from such mindset. At least community maintained distros like Mint and Debian should be highly conservative about moving to higher kernels and even refuse to upgrade at all unless these issues are fixed first.

Thank you for listening to my rant.