SUSE Studio

This seems like a problem that services such as SUSE Studio (I can't remember the others I have seen but rBuilder comes to mind) could solve. The vast majority of a distribution's users will be fine with USB devices or DVDs. The ones running on older hardware can create their own CD image. I feel this kind of service would lead to services such as virtualboximages.com to make it easy to find required images for antiquated hardware leading to a better experience for persons using older systems.

I personally have 3 servers running on my home network using 32bit CPUs. I don't have any plans to upgrade them. They will be replaced when they die or my required software no longer runs on them.