I came to Linux late in life and have only really been using it seriously as long as I have been a member of this forum, so basically just a few years. I did start with vanilla Ubuntu and then I read an article about UM being an underutilized gem in the distro world so I gave it a try. To be honest, it was this community that really locked me into UM. All of you have been welcoming and helpful and really have helped me embrace linux. I find my self doing things like using cron, writing scripts and I even created a home network. I’m no expert and half the time I still have no idea what a lot of you are talking about, but my point is, it was this community more than it was the distro that made me support UM… for me anyway.
I also think UM missed the boat. With the end of Win 10 support, a lot of linux distros “cashed in” so to speak and UM had an opportunity to showcase itself but was totally silent. When I first installed UM, it was in the low 80’s on Distro watch and for the last three months it has fallen to 180+. I know DW is not a true picture of number of installs, but it does indicate the number of searches/interest and it just keeps dropping.
Anyway, considering this thread, I am starting to explore different distros. I’ll stick with Ubuntu/Debian based distros and right now I am leaning toward MINT as I would rather use a distro that looks like it will be around for a while and one that has plenty of support. Plus, I am not really a power user so I want something that works as well as provides me a platform to learn and explore. Ironically, the thing holding me back from making the switch is their forums. They are horrible and some of the moderators need to not be moderators.
Here’s hoping UM sticks around and I don’t have to make the jump, and I agree with others, it would be nice if we had some communication from the devs on UM’s future.