It is impossible to avoid news about this operating system, because it is widely discussed. There are several reasons for this. They are somehow interlinked, but let me list them separately.
Linux Mint is currently #1 in the Distrowatch’s popularity rating.
Linux Mint’s team decided to avoid the way of their major codebase owner, Ubuntu, and forked 2 (two!) desktop environments for use with their distribution, on top of standard KDE and Xfce. These desktop environments are Cinnamon and MATE.