Elementary OS has picked a specific niche, and its arguably the best distribution in it. It has a really well designed and consistent UI experience, and you can't break it. I think most of you just don't realize how difficult linux is for people who barely understand how to use a Mac or Windows machine.
Furthermore, linux is a world where mainstream distributions still release with horrible UI experiences with numerous typography mistakes, icons of different sizes and grid alignment imbalances everywhere.
Like check out this Mint (grey theme) screenshot: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/Li... and compare it with elementary OS here https://news-cdn.softpedia.com/images/news2/elementary-os-0-...
Mint is great, but seriously. Look at that logo render. Even worse, look at the start bar. Every single text and logo has a different height. I mean how do you even do something like that unintentionally?
I am using XFCE right now, and it's great because its much faster than KDE or Gnome on this old laptop. But it sure isn't a pretty UI. I know a MSc. designer and she claims using my laptop makes her physically sick and dizzy. I don't care as much, but I can see the point. Everything is misaligned, in the start menu, the task bar, the apps. In the window bar the buttons and the minimize arrow aren't the same size. I mean seriously, whoever did this just did not care about Ui.
I don't think ElementaryOS is for everyone. If you have any interest in non-standard repos, recent kernels or doing stuff in commandline, you are just better off elsewhere. I understand their choices, but I don't use it because of how they do the app store, among other things.
But if you just want a computer that runs, looks good and doesn't break if you do X, then I think ElementaryOS is the #1 choice in the Linux world, and we should be thankful that it exists.