The post is missing a section about video cards.
My old laptop from 2006 has an ATI x1600. I remember that I lost v sync with kernels past 3.something so I had to put the kernel on hold while the other packages updated around it. That was around 2012. Maybe the issue is fixed by now but old graphic cards can make an old PC run only as a headless server. It's been years since I booted it.
I have one Nvdia system where it's locked to their drivers in BIOS meaning I can't use AMD. Now Ubuntu has dropped support for old GeForce it's essentially a brick, thanks Nvidia and Canonical.
Nouveau might handle it.
Gallium will support r300 Radeon cards perfectly fine. If any I have this for some MESA and Intel video cards at ~/.drirc.
Adapt it for your radeon driver. The device driver might be "ati", "radeon" or "radeonsi".