I agree that Linux Mint is closer to what the vocal Linux desktop community would like to see, but Ubuntu is anything but abandoned. Where I work, both my coworkers (excluding myself) and customers are either using RHEL or Ubuntu. That’s it. Sure, everyone on Lemmy and Reddit swears against Ubuntu and has no need for plain-RHEL, but a lot more of the non-vocal Linux community is using Ubuntu. I prefer Pop!_OS, but that’s besides the point.
Source: Ubuntu is anywhere between 4th and 6th place on these charts: