I feel like Ubuntu has the greatest exposure among non-Linux folks. It's the only OS any place I've ever worked used on WSL back when I was still on windows. Probably a lot of corporate nerds want to stick to what's comfortable?
I have no idea if that's the reason, but Ubuntu and Mint are the only two distros I've tried for basically that reason. Heard good things about PopOS. Might try it some time if I wind up with an extra computer.
Regular Ubuntu I get; it's specifically the separation in the list between core and the standard 24.04 distro that I don't get. I can't imagine that droves of nerds are installing straight Ubuntu Core unprompted. I'd absolutely buy though that some distro or some handheld is based on one.