[scns]

I'd rather comment than downvote. Who cares about about a kernel build from 1997 (25 years ago)? What was the hardware back then, Pentium 2? Sorry for the snark in advance but: Why make mountains out of molehills? Life is hard enough as it is.

[marginalia_nu]

You may not own a Pentium 2, but someone might. This is only hard if you make it hard. My that an old Linux kernel, by design, can be built today. This is a feature it has for free, a consequence of not relying on flimsy network based dependency managers.

At any rate, we are indebted to the future to preserve the present, as our past has been preserved for our benefit.