@VictorelPetrovich Thanks for the market data, makes it feel better to drop 32 bit, but as you said, anybody who needs to can continue to use 1.37.1 and fork it if they want to backport later changes to Geany..
As for which Linux, thats likely to start a :bike: :house: (bikeshed) but IMHO if you want to use the distro to do stuff, and not be on the bleeding edge (well you did still have Windows 7 :-) then look at Mint.