Back in the day, ubuntu used to be the most user friendly distro. Linux for humans. It has a faster release cycle by not following stable debian releases. It had hardware support that you had to jump through hoops in debian to get. A great community. It made sense to base mint on ubuntu.
To follow up, how come e.g. mint decides to base their distro on Ubuntu rather than Debian?
https://www.linuxmint.com/rel_gigi.php
“LMDE 7 is based on Debian 13 Trixie. Make sure to read the Debian release notes.”
Back in the day, ubuntu used to be the most user friendly distro. Linux for humans. It has a faster release cycle by not following stable debian releases. It had hardware support that you had to jump through hoops in debian to get. A great community. It made sense to base mint on ubuntu.