Distrowatch stats are based on hits to distro pages on their 'informational' website. They don't reflect downloads, active installs or anything tangible beyond interest in a platform based on their #3 ranking for 'Linux Mint' in Google. Even the graph used on this pingdom blog say "Distrowatch's page hit ranking (Nov 23)".

In fact the Google Trends referenced below as "gage the interest in" stats are _more_ likely to be a barometer of real-world popularity as google searches will include a considerable amount of people looking for support for their own (current) platform, not just 'about distro X'. Hence Ubuntu's higher numbers.

It's not even fair to Alexa to call DW the 'Alexa of Linux popularity' the stats are that skewed from reality.

I'm not an Ubuntu fanboy, and fair credit to Mint for providing another truly viable user desktop distro, but I do get tired of the annual trotting out of bogus stats and misinterpretations for the sole (successful) purpose of flamebait, originally on slashdot, and now apparently HN.