If my kids asked to play Minecraft and I installed that game, it would be a bit like them asking for pancakes and serving them bran flakes and a grapefruit.

They're not even remotely similar games, and have wildly different levels of appropriateness for children -- though that obviously depends on parental preference.

In any case, there's not even a slight their friends are playing it, and that is probably the most important factor for most kids.

My bran flakes -> pancakes statement wasn't referring to Minetest. I was referring to the Age of Empires clone the parent comment recommended instead of Minetest.

P.S. Kudos to the young one for being open minded and independent about alternatives in the face of heavily-marketed-and-heavily-peer-used things! I can tell they're already wise beyond their years =)

Minetest is as much of an alternative to Minecraft as Linux is an alternative to Windows. It works for some people, it won't work for most. It's less polished, requires some assembly (choosing a modpack), etc. They're quite obviously different games (as I pointed out already). But you don't need a degree in computer science, it's just a game. You can click on "new world" and start exploring and building.

What most people comparing the two seem to forget about, is just how much of a shitshow Minecraft modding is - and you don't really want to run the game without mods like sodium+lithium or optifine, because of how horribly unoptimized it is. I definitely prefer the Minecraft experience overall, but the game would've been completely unplayable on M1 Macs without tremendous community effort, whereas Minetest runs smoothly on a 12yro laptop with zero tweaking.