Yes, I know that the ranking is not a good metric of real world use.
Just posting this because MX Linux has been in the number one spot for a long time (2 years perhaps?) and it’s surprising to see some other distro on the top of their site.
You know what? You might be right; I never actually bothered to check if Cinnamon was heavier than Plasma, I just remember it feeling very stuttery when I last daily drove it. Admittedly, that was a very long time ago and GNOME was a complete shit show back then so Cinnamon probably just inherited some of its performance issues. I imagine all of that is fixed by now.