[WD-42]

Is mint really the most popular distro? According to distrowatch, yes. But my suspicion is that mint users just like to tell everyone they are mint users. The majority of Ubuntu users probably just install it and go on with their lives.

[ufo]

I think a big factor is that if you google for "Linux Mint" the distrowatch page is one of the top results, while if you google for "Ubuntu Linux" you get other results instead.