I wouldn't worry about Lemmy having as many users as reddit in the short term. Success is not just a measure of userbase. A system just needs a critical mass, a minimum number of users, to be self-perpetuating. For a reddit post that has 10k comments, most normal people only read a few dozen comments anyways. You could have half the comments on that post, and frankly the quality might go up, not down. (That said, there are many communities below that minimum critical mass at the moment.)
Lemmy is now a real alternative. When reddit imploded Lemmy wasn't fully set up to take advantage of the exodus, so a lot of users came over to the fediverse and gave up right away. There were no phone apps, the user interface was rudimentary, and communities weren't yet alive. Next time reddit screws up in a high profile way, and they will screw up, the fediverse will be ready.
Lemmy has way more potential than reddit. Reddit's leadership has always been incompetent and slow at fixing problems. The fediverse has been very responsive to user feedback in comparison.
It is definetly better
I remember that the website had first that new posts pop up at the top so a user dont have to reload the page, but made with the influx of people /new very unusable because after seeing something cool i had to follow it every few seconds or open it in a new tab
not sure if you were around for the lemmy 0.17.x "oh god why is my front page on fire why are all the instances down" times but let me tell you this is a significant improvement compared to the peak of the reddit exodus, at least when it comes to the technical parts