[ShadowAce]

Does Linux support backwards compatibility with older versions?

Yes.

[Myrddin]

I had to dump a motherboard that was BIOS boot only. Old hardware. Incapable of the secure boot introduced by Fedora. As a stopgap, I put Ubuntu on the box because it still had BIOS boot capability. That motherboard also failed early under Linux when the onboard Ethernet hardware support was dropped by Linux distros. A USB Ethernet adapter rescued the hardware for a couple years.