Because:

The DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking statistics are a light-hearted way of measuring the popularity of Linux distributions and other free operating systems among the visitors of this website. They correlate neither to usage nor to quality and should not be used to measure the market share of distributions. They simply show the number of times a distribution page on DistroWatch was accessed each day, nothing more.

So people see it on the list and click on it wondering "what the heck is this MX Linux thing". And that boosts the ranking. And now that it's at the top, it attracts more curious clicks, thus it continues to remain on top.

Distro watch numbers have been a meme forever. If you want your favorite distro ranked higher make a robot to refresh its distro watch page and that distro's rank will go up. That's all distro watch has ever been.

they count clicks on a distro's page on their site, not usage or anything else.

if they dared put hanna montana linux on there, it would be the perpetual #1 listing.

Are MX users just low key quiet, am I escaping their presence or is there a different reason for MX' high HPD score?

That's definitely a factor. People write and talk about new and exciting stuff, MX is neither. There's no point in writing an article that goes: MX experience - same as a year ago because nothing changed, see ya again in a year.

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).

I decided to fully convert to Linux on my living room PC because I was convinced these random display drops I was getting were being caused by Windows. (I was right.)

I had a drive that I wanted to leave alone, because it had my videos and music and such. I wanted to try a new (to me) distro, so I just started using high rated ones I found on distro watch. The first two I tried (I honestly forget which) would NOT leave my video drive alone during installation (even with advanced options). The third one was MX, and it successfully installed while leaving my video drive alone. I liked that. I am used to xfce, and I like some of the custom little tweaks that MX adds to it, like easily making custom folder themes. I like that it can install .deb files and pretty much everything I've tried to run so far has worked.

So, yeah, that's why I like MX. I have since installed it on my laptop, my office PC, and my husband is dual booting it. It even runs his v-tube software, which blew us away. I know most of this isn't unique to MX, but it just seems to work really well for us.

MX Linux is my daily atm. I tend to hop around every few months (normally I use Mint.). Honestly, I'm enjoying it far more than Mint and don't see that changing.

Dunno about what's up with distrowatch; just chiming in as that one MX Linux person.

Might be a coincidence but MX Linux still supports 32bit x86 CPU's.

I recently installed MX Linux on an old Dell Inspiron 1300 which inexplicably still runs and it's pretty snappy, considering.

No shit how? I actually used it because of damn distrowatch, it is solid but damn Debian based. Had to switch because the Nextcloud version was outdated and didnt work with an updated server.

MX fans could have set the MX Distrowatch page als browser home page and generate clicks semi-automatically.

Maybe MX attracts people who just want to use their computer easily. They are not interested in talking about their OS on the web.

I never encountered MX. What is it's usecase?

It's being gamed. If there were 1% of linux users on MX, I'll eat a bug.

Easy & quick install. I don't recall the last time anything went wrong. Great performance with lots of useful tools developed by MX team. sysV by default - init freedom... you can boot systemd if desired and interesting... there's an UNOFFICIAL init-diversity respin with 5 inits: sysVinit, systemd, runit, s6 & s6-66 selectable at boot menu:

https://www.antixforum.com/forums/topic/mx-23-2-init-diversity-respin/ https://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=79448

Been exclusively running MX with Openbox (OB) since early 2019 on my 6 home systems All run great without any issues.

Also remotely support 3 senior, 70+ (one is 85) , users. In 2021, using 'live' DVD, switched them to MX from Linux Mint with their assistance to initially install/config SSH, then used SSH & VNC to finish MX install. Took about 45 minutes per system. These seniors are just users, not in any way computer nuts; email, web, simple games (Mahjong, solitaire, etc.) and occasionally LO Writer & 1 uses LO Calc for home budget. They all adapted to MX quickly over a couple of days. I rarely get any support calls and they faithfully do upates without prodding from me. The Calc user occasionaly calls for assistance with... well... Calc.

I also run 3 MX VMs: 1 for banking, 1 for paying bills, 1 for managing investments, each is used specifically/exclusively for intended purpose. NO web browsing, games or installs, downloads only from sites relative to VM - account statements from bank on banking VM, etc.

Discovered MX-18.1 in 2019 by chance while on a rare 'excursion' into distro hopping. Installed MX & OB in a VM (good ol' Virtualbox) in about 20 minutes, including the time adding/editing my OB config from my daily driver at the time, CrowZ. After a few days, switched all my systems to MX and haven't considered using any other distro since.

I've tried many distros over 15 years. My favorite distro is #! (Crunchbang) which sadly is no longer available. When #! ended I switched to CrowZ, a Devuan spin using OB - obviously I prefer OB.

So yes, I like and run MX exclusively although I would switch to #! if the 'original' #! project ever resurrects.

Blue Skys, Green lights to all...

Mxlinux was actually the first distro I installed, which was on my oldest functional laptop. Still running strong!

Low key quiet I guess, I used Linux with various distro, Ubuntu from maybe 2010-2014, Mint Cinnamon 2014-2018, then since 2018, MX, I don't rant about it because it just works, simple, efficient, Xfce, no snap/flat. I have a simple desktop with a taskbar à la Windows XP, meaning a menu button, window buttons, and the icon/hour. My latest install was LUKS+btrfs, it went like butter.

Everything works, is up to date, never break.

I've been running MX Linux on two different computers for maybe 5 years or so. One a desktop and one a laptop. It just works for me. I've tried a ton of other distros, and this is the one that has had the least issues for my hardware.