Just looking at it based on this article and brief looking around. It seems like an attempt to cater to end/desktop users who are looking for alternatives to windows and Mac OS. As something to put on their computer, not a nerdy hobby. They have various premium products with target of individuals and organizational deployments. It is presented in a professional fashion which may appear more credible than crawling through some half-maintained wiki. They have a corporate-looking documentation site.

And a forum but they don’t link to it, only find by searching. The forum does not corroborate the idea of thousands of new users. If that were the case, it would be flooded with people having various issues. But their Installation help section is mostly people having upgrade issues (i.e. existing users). And as linux forums go, it is very quiet and does not suggest substantial userbase unless there is some other more popular venue. If they have paid support people and a business model, then that is good for some needs. But even lots of full capitalist proprietary businesses have user forums.

I don’t begrudge anyone for trying to make money doing code. There is certainly lots of opportunity and high levels of discontent with currently available solutions. As to their internal business practices I have no idea. There is also a question of whether they contribute back to linux like by committing paid time to projects, donations to the various non profits who form the skeleton of the business etc. Or do they keep everything for themselves with baroque web of licensing?

Wrt the concept of counting downloads, the reason distros would have to avoid releasing that info, is because it would be very difficult to collect. Linux is traditionally distributed through a network of mirrors, torrents and other uncountable methods. Example debian and arch. And there are more local branches from those. By bragging about their metrics, it is more bringing attention to the unusually centralized nature of their product.

Would also suggest that “over 78% of these downloads came from Windows” in the context of extremely badly implemented upgrade from 17->18 could just be a lot of existing users who cannot download from linux because their linux machine has been completely hosed so they hop on their friend’s/work/school device to download for a fresh install.

It is based on Ubuntu, which is one of the most popular linux distros. Ubuntu is based on good old solid Debian. I’m sure it’s functional. And assuming they can keep themselves from being overtly evil, might be a good thing to have around. For a desktop user who is comfortable in an online forum I don’t see much special here. But you can always try it.

It has a rep for looking and feeling like Windows.

They have a pro version with custom layouts, for ppl who want to not deal with customizing themselves I guess? Idk its fairly easy to use gnome extensions or kde to get the layouts they use, but I guess you get many preset decent looks in one de, not sure.

Not really.