[GunboatDiplomat]

> Does Linux add support for newer Intel and AMD chips in old kernels?

The kernel devs may not, but distros backport new stuff to old kernels constantly. For example, RHEL/CentOS 6 is kernel 2.6.32, release 7 years ago. But it supports modern CPUs.

[runeks]

More succinctly: Linux doesn't have this problem at all because it's open source. You can stitch together the kernel in any way you want, and layer any user space on top of that to get an OS.