Please don’t get me wrong, this is not meant to be rude slander. MX Linux is not a bad Distro at all (even tho I’ve always opted for Debian instead) and peops are free to use what suits them best.
But compared to other Distros (like Arch, Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian or Mint) there doesn’t seem to be much excitement about it. I hardly see articles about MX and I have barely seen people outing themselves as MX users which makes me wonder:
Are MX users just low key quiet, am I escaping their presence or is there a different reason for MX’ high HPD score?
Btw: feel free to take a shot every time I write MX :p
Distro watch rankings are just which page gets the most hits. Get a bunch of different IPs to load LemmyLinux and it’ll be number one (and then actual people will click on it to see what it is and why it’s number one).
Wait do we really have a distro called LemmyLinux??
As far as I know I made it up, but I stand ready to be surprised!
I too had the thought that some people might mess around with the hpd numbers but I don’t want to make accusations without solid proof ^^
Back in the naughties PCLinuxOS was at #1 and people suspected them of cheating. I’m sure some people do try to game it, but there’s plenty of organic and bot traffic to compete with.
Besides, I think the popularity thing’s kinda backwards - I’d never visit Ubuntu or Fedora because I know what they are, but I’ll be clicking on something novel out of curiosity.