Hi Rey:

I'm not a coder or programmer (since my Fortran circa 1970 doesn't count these days), but I have played around with several Linux distros over the past 8+ years.

For a solid, highly-compatible distro with superior &amp; friendly user support (via Forum), frequent &amp; effortless updates (and with quarterly iso releases) with 32- and 64-bit architectures and multiple window-manager choices, there's none better than PCLinuxOS.  It is indeed true to it's "Radically Simple" tagline.

I use the Full KDE 64-bit variant of PCLinuxOS.  They have LiveCD (d/l the iso you want -&gt; burn to DVD) you can try w/o install, and when you're ready, boot the LiveCD and run the installer.

The laptop I'm writing this from is triple-boot: Win7 x64, Win8.1 x64, and PCLinuxOS x64 KDE (w/ Win7 x32 Enterprise running as a VM inside VBox).  Of course, PLinuxOS is my preferred OS on this lappy - runs great!

I suggest you wait a few days for the 2014.3 (1st quarter) PCLinuxOS ISO releases to come out (they'll have all the updates since December 2012.12 baked in), then grab the PCLOS variant of your choice via bit-torrent.  Enjoy!
http://www.pclinuxos.com  100% FREE too!