I've tried Minetest a few times. My issue with it is that it just feels very unpolished. Things like the lack of head bobbing, so it feels like the character is gliding across the ground, a pretty bad looking block break animation without enough particles, a very floaty-feeling jump, and on macOS, the scrolling in menus is completely broken and it's not running at the display's native resolution (no HiDPI/"Retina" support), you can't change settings in-game, hitting escape in the main menu just exits the program, etc etc etc. It feels like a game engine demo project, not a game. Everything down to the name "Minetest" feels unfinished and unpolished.

There are probably mods for all those things.

The idea in minetest is that you need to add mods for the stuff you want

Right. That might make it a good game engine playground, but a pretty bad Minecraft alternative.

It's like a couple of clicks to install mods…

This is exactly the mind-set which prevents projects like Minetest from becoming "real" games. Mods are great, but the core game has to be good by itself to attract people. And if Minetest doesn't want to be a "real" game which is good out of the box, that's fine, being a game engine playground is perfectly fine, but that means it's not even trying to be a Minecraft alternative.