I think the problem is that being installed by default on a popular distro is a double-edged sword: on one hand there are more users, which means more bug repor

I think the problem is that being installed by default on a popular distro is a double-edged sword: on one hand there are more users, which means more bug reports, potentially more contributions and maintainers, etc. but on the other hand there will be more complaints from people who don't actually want to use it. As long as something is an "alternative" rather than common/default, its users will mostly be self-selected because they specifically went out of their way to use it.