[ThomasWinwood]

Personally, as a fan of retro games consoles (which are broadly in the same boat as retrocomputing hardware) I'm as interested in new independently-produced software as I am in the software released during the hardware's commercial lifespan. Original games aren't getting any cheaper as copies disappear into private collections, and the economic incentives don't exist for copyright holders to make new authentic cartridges.

As such, the vibrancy of these systems relies on writing new software being a pleasant experience, and there's a limit to how pleasant that experience can be when your only choice of non-assembly language is C.

[duskwuff]

Retro gaming consoles are kind of different. Any software for them is necessarily written for that console in particular, and can take advantage of its hardware capabilities in unique ways, even if you're using modern tools to write that software.

Standard Linux software running on a PC, even an older and weirder PC, probably isn't going to do anything that interesting. At the end of the day, an X server running Firefox (or whatever) isn't going to be any different on an old PA-RISC workstation than it is on a modern desktop computer or a Raspberry Pi or whatever.