I wanted to upgrade to binutils 2.26 , so i followed the steps here : How to convert default binutils into binutils-2.26? to solve the same "unrecognized relocation" error.
Now my default linker is 2.26
$ ld --version
GNU ld (GNU Binutils for Ubuntu) 2.26.1
Copyright (C) 2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This program is free software; you may redistribute it under the terms of
the GNU General Public License version 3 or (at your option) a later version.
This program has absolutely no warranty.
But "make" still uses the "/usr/bin/x86_64-linux-gnu-ld" (which is 2.24) and still gives the same error.
So how to force "make" to use the default linker ?
It depends upon your Makefile (which you could debug with remake -x). Notice that make has a lot of builtin rules. Use make -p to also print them. Notice the rules mentioning LINK.c or LINK.cc etc, and notice that LD is not much used. Notice also that ld is almost never used directly (most of the time, some other program like gcc or g++ runs it).
And it is also a matter of the PATH variable. So try setting it so that your new ld comes before the old one.
Generally, you link with the gcc or g++ program (so it is GCC which matters, not make; read about Invoking GCC and its -fuse-ld=), and that gcc or g++ will run the linker (you might, but I don't recommend to, change its spec file which governs what actual programs are run by gcc or g++ which are only drivers to other programs such as cc1, as, ld, collect2 etc...). To understand what programs gcc or g++ is running, pass it the -v flag.
But "make" still uses the "/usr/bin/x86_64-linux-gnu-ld" (which is 2.24) and still gives the same error.
On my Debian system /usr/bin/x86_64-linux-gnu-ld (it is generally started by gcc, not directly by make) is a symlink. You might (but I don't recommend that) just change that symlink.
BTW, you are using an ancient Ubuntu 14. You'll better upgrade your entire distribution (e.g. to Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS at end of 2018), because there is not only ld but many other programs which are really old on your system.
Upgrading your distribution will take less time than upgrading, compiling, installing and configuring each individual tool.