Schwim Dandy

The British have all the good luck.

I didn’t understand that, thank you for the clarification.

lot of YouTubers recommend it as something that looks a bit like Windows (on the surface).

Oh yeah, I forgot that was it’s schtick. Well, best of luck to them, regardless of the cause.

Any idea on what caused the spike? I used Zorin years and years ago and while nifty, didn’t have anything that met a particular need that wasn’t already satisfied by other distros. I checked their site and it looks like nothing drastic has changed.

Perhaps some popular influencer or advertisement type thing?

They might have “fled” because they were worried for their safety. The OP sounds legitimately unhinged.