Linux Mint as been in development for over 15 years. Its good for them to get some press coverage and positive attention.
As far as I can tell most people switching to Linux Mint are fairly happy with the experience beside some minor Linux quarks.
KDE is is designed to be customized at the cost of user friendliness. Cinnamon has a lot customization but it isn’t as overwhelming and is much more stable. It also is GTK which is nice.