I quite like elementary OS and I have installed it for several non-technical people who are happy with it. I wouldn’t use it myself because it’s not what I want from Linux. I use Arch, btw.

At one point elementary OS developers liked to tell people they’re “cheating the system” for not paying for their OS. This didn’t really resonate well with the community, just like the time Ubuntu included Amazon tracking into their search function by default.

They also continue to think they’re the bestest designers and most important people in online discussions, while not improving much upstream, but instead focusing on NIH syndrome development procedures. For example, they are not happy with using the lots of existing browsers, but ship their own webkit GUI.

What the Mastodon discussion you linked means with “orange site” may be HN, where they discussed elementary OS 6, too. Some people mention it’s great and they’ll try it because macOS went to shit. Others criticise the NIH syndrome I mentioned and that they take a lot of money from developers who publish on their AppCenter, while only allowing Open Source. Most of the comments there are positive, though, so I’m not quite sure they really meant HN.