> ...but there's no guarantee my hardware is compatible with Ubuntu LTS 22.04 because the vendor doesn't support that config...
So it's your vendor who doesn't care about backwards compatibility - Linux does. Whatever hardware you have, once it was supported, it will stay this way until it is really ancient, and even then you will have special builds that will support it. That's the beauty of open source (or even source available) licenses. No corporate interests that would render your solution obsolete. [0]
[0] assuming your hardware doesn't need some binary blobs (khm nvidia khm) to work
So it's your vendor who doesn't care about backwards compatibility - Linux does. Whatever hardware you have, once it was supported, it will stay this way until it is really ancient, and even then you will have special builds that will support it. That's the beauty of open source (or even source available) licenses. No corporate interests that would render your solution obsolete. [0]
[0] assuming your hardware doesn't need some binary blobs (khm nvidia khm) to work