Win XP Successor

I think you should try Linux Mint with Mate or Cinnamon as they are lighter GUIs than KDE and Unity

I'd pay attention to that error about sectors, if you have a build up of bad sectors on your disk, which is likely considering how old it likely is to be that small, if that's the case it may die on you soon anyway

that having been said regular old ubuntu is probably your best bet in terms of getting steam up and running, but you might not be able to install since you don't have any persistence on disc? try actually installing it or running it live from USB instead of cd
and only 1gb of ram? how do you function man?

good luck either way, but considering ddr4 is coming out now and you're probably on ddr1 it might be time to upgrade... give the old stuff to your parents or something

Kubuntu worked for me for around 6 months before I switched back to windows,installed steam on it. If I recall correctly,1 mib=1024 kib=1024X1024 bytes where 1 mb=1000kb=1000X1000 bytes.

You could try out Fedora, and I heard Mint is pretty good, but I never used that one. I used to use openSUSE years ago, but I don't know how it's doing right now.

you can download windows 8 from microsoft. You can try it for a month without the serial code and the decided if is worth.

MiB instead of MB. Basically people are trying to adopt it to remove the confusion between binary and decimal based prefixes.

Ubuntu with Xce its pretty lite... so i guess Xubuntu its a great option.
if you have kids you can intall Doudou or quime, my kids love those

Is this real? If you want steam installed, NO linux distro will cut it with those specs. The main reason is the gpu being SOO old. Drivers are going to be hell.
Stick with XP, nothing will change in April. The computer will still boot just fine.

Even better...
Spend like $300 and get a faster computer than this, lol. If you want, I'll even build it for you.
$340 gaming build
GTX 650Ti/Haswell CPU/4GB DDR3-1600/SSD/1TB HDD/etc. Would fly on any game and run Win8.1 or any Linux distro like a boss.
The build is even fully able to support an i7 or Xeon paried with a GTX Titan or R9 290X. Just buy a new PSU.

Minimum wage here in Seattle is $9.32. Thats like 36 hours worked for this build. Factor in taxes and call it one 40 hour work week. One week grocery bagger's wages = entry level gaming.
You're welcome.

Thx for all the help so far. Will go for the advised linuxes. I sure buy a new pc someday, the pickpart can looks good. Or maybe when win 9 is released. Wait just a moment I'll be back I have to oil my PSU fan, its sticking

They pushed back the End of the Support/Update System on XP of a year if I'm not mistaken.. look into it.

I think Debian would be best try... it's primary distribution of one of three major Linux branches nowadays. The most popular branch. Because Ubuntu (X-, L- and K- as well) are based upon it, it guarantees quite high compatibility and similar functionality. Debian doesn't have many unnecessary tools integrated so it should be faster. If I were you I'd install basic setup for Debian (no GUI, tools, servers etc.) and then install GUI (Easy tutorial), command-not-found package and then what's needed so you don't slow it down much ;)
You have quite old GPU - best suited would be some lightweight GUI. Try testing MATE, LXDE or XFCE - those should work faster than XP and not consume so much resources but may require some basic configuration on start so it looks quite nice. Turning off some animations and/or effects should help if there are issues.
As for Steam problems... contact me if you can't do something - I'll try to help (but after next Sunday - too busy) - I've installed in few times so far and I had no issues... maybe you was missing some package or something (but then DEB package should detect it if dependancies are set properly).
From my experience I would not suggest new GNOME (or anything based upon it), KDE, Compiz etc.

If you want some testing, try making virtual machine on VMware Player or VirtualBox before making actual installation - I don't remember seeing LiveCDs on downloads page last time I checked. Virtual Machines are good for LiveCD tests as well.

PS: end of support for XP (not MS antivirus software) is scheduled shortly... means no new security updates (last updates distributed by MS for XP) anymore so if you're into security etc., it might be good moment for change :)

Linux Mint - it works much faster than Ubuntu. I don't know why, but it is good for desktop (you can use debain or ubuntu version // Ubuntu - easier, Debian faster, but also included older files), if you don't want install all themselves/ or from repositories old(stable) like on Debian. It also include java etc., so you don't must manually install it :). At package manager (have GUI) install wine and many games will work under it. Don't install "native" linux games or steam (which was portet to linux) as they have worse performance than running at wine (TF2 120 FPS vs 24 FPS). I recommend MATE or XFCE (LXDE take more resources than XFCE and are worse compatibility, MATE - old Gnome 2 have the most) - it works very well, also as file type I always use XFC for their performance (yes it is designed for performance for mixed sized files) - it easy get better performance, than popular ext4 or ext3.

I try install ubuntu 2-3 times, but never have it longer than 2 hours. It is too slow - on 4 core cpu, 4GB RAM it works worse than Windows 7 + 5 autostart programs or Windows XP on 1,8 Ghz CPU and 512RAM. Debian or Mint bit it easy new Windows 7, but on games will have less FPS, due to games mostly are done for Windows.

In that specification check, if you can or can't use newest version. When not - use older. It was 1 time, whenm requirements increse much. I don't tell you now exactly which version - look at their site.

You understand that your Windows will still be working after that date. You just won't be able to get any more updates. (Just like if you installed Windows 98.)

They just can't keep updating that 12 year old piece of antique software forever. I mean, it's been replaced almost 8 years ago and we're on the third different major release since.

Just stick win Windows XP?

I have a laptop that is from 2007, that came with Vista, pretty much always used it with XP, put 7 on it recently, but the old bastard barely can cope with it. So guess what, I am gonna put XP back on it shortly from now. That way I can even run some simpler games on it, where it is already slow on Vista or 7 without any games.

Don't really care about XP becoming EOL, as long as it runs way better on that old machine it'll be just fine for just that.

Install SteamOS, obviously.

Ok a few tips for you:

• With only 1GB RAM please don't run LiveCD for testing, since for LiveCD the files are loaded in RAM. This will give you a wrong impression of performance. Install dual-boot or why not use complete HDD, you will see the real performance.

• Try Kubuntu, I like it. Ubuntu itself is good and I use it on both my machines, but you need 2GB RAM at least for Unity (I run it on 7 year-old laptop with 2GB RAM).

• Download Kubuntu 32-bit version, it should use less RAM than 64-bit.

• Look on how to enable zRAM on your Linux install. On Ubuntu-based it's very easy to install and setup.

• KDE (Kubuntu) also has a special netbook mode! Which is excellent for machine with only 1GB RAM. See here for example on how to enable it http://www.zdnet.com/kde-netbook-desktop-my-guide-to-configuring-and-using-it-7000001905/

If you have any other Linux questions you can always PM me.

Just browse for some really lightweight Linux distros and try something from the list.

If you want to build a Linux system yourself (I'm not talking about Linux from scratch and such stuff right now) where there'll be nothing except what you really need, try Arch. You won't be given any GUI at first, so you'll have to use CLI instead until you install everything you need. It's not so difficult even if you're not familiar with bash commands; just read their beginner guide - this will suffice. Instead of heavyweight GNOME or KDE get yourself XFCE or LXDE, or, if you don't mind trying something even more lightweight, get some WM like openbox and use it instead of DE.

Well Kubuntu is a verry easy distribution from Linux, Ubuntu is considered the most used distrib of Linux and also the best. But if you don't want to go after all to Linux you can try Windows 8,you'll be surprised that it's not that picky.

I think Debian is one of the lighter ones.

I recommend PCLinuxOS with LXDE easy to use, runs pretty well on older PCs.
Also you could install Steam client with the software manager with just a few clicks.

I don't think you'll be able to install anything while running it from LiveCD.
Best performance you should get from Lubuntu or Debian+LXDE, but forget about Steam. Nothing will work with your GPU. Performance wise, Steam on linux is awfull and requires a lot of resources for even the oldest games.

Your best choice is to stick with XP - nothing is going to change.

Linux: Ubuntu

b-but Unity!
Install another desktop environment, like IceWM (+themes) or LXDE (they need low resources), and select them at login (Ubuntu icon near your name).
Unity needs 256 MiB vRAM
This is new to me. Where did you red this?
(by the way: Unity is just a plugin for Compiz compoziting window manager)

And why do linuxers write "MiB" instead of "MB"?
Because that is the real "megabyte":
1 MB = 1000 KB
1 MiB = 1024 KiB
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mebibyte
Curse them hardware manufacturers and SI crap! :<
Next time time will be "reinterpreted":
1 h = 100 s
1 hi = 60 si
Motto: Work more for less!

And for those bad sectors: replace your harddisk, because you will loose your stuff!

I see a lot of people here recommend KDE/Kubuntu, you do know that KDE just uses a lot more resource for no reason other than better looks , whistles and bells you don;t need. Ubuntu + gnome also uses a lot of resources, best performance would be debian with xfce but linux generally sucks with steam so you might want to keep XP...