The main pitfall with vintage compatibility on Linux is package managers. While package managers make system-wide updates trivial, several distributions have been around for two decades now, and there are NOT comprehensive archives of every version of every package that has ever been available from these repositories. If you come across a binary package built for 2002-era Fedora or Debian (or a distribution of similar vintage), you might have a rather difficult time getting it to run. Those dependencies may not even exist anymore even in archives. The original source code can probably be tracked down, but you are well into a retro computing adventure at this point.
The main pitfall with vintage compatibility on Linux is package managers. While package managers make system-wide updates trivial, several distributions have been around for two decades now, and there are NOT comprehensive archives of every version of every package that has ever been available from these repositories. If you come across a binary package built for 2002-era Fedora or Debian (or a distribution of similar vintage), you might have a rather difficult time getting it to run. Those dependencies may not even exist anymore even in archives. The original source code can probably be tracked down, but you are well into a retro computing adventure at this point.