Minetest 5.9.0 is here!

Pretty good improvements for a pretty good game.

I thought so. I am really excited to see what comes next.
- I hope they fix redstone and other interactive stuff like doors. They do get stuck and redstone gets reset very often.

Love Minetest. Unfortunately, though, like with many other FOSS projects, it’s hard to find anyone else using it…

Anyone got a server for us lemmings?

There are plenty of servers. Also, you can get others on it. If someone is into Minecraft modding Minetest is dream.
Check out the server list:

https://servers.minetest.net/

this will probably get downvoted to hell but im just gonna say it: minetest is just not as good as minecraft (and tbh i don't think it ever will be)

now to be clear im not happy what microsoft is doing lately with minecraft but i really like the older versions of the game (1.7 era) and those are way better than what minetest offers - also minecraft has a larger player base so there are tons of free/open source mods

Well, Minetest also can hardly be compared to Minecraft as Minetest is only an engine or platform for voxel based games like Minecraft. What you rather have to critique is something like Mineclonia that is apparently a more active fork of the MineClone2/VoxeLibre project that try to perfectly replicate Minecraft (without using Minecraft assets that is) on Minetest. Allegedly it's pretty good now but I haven't tried so myself. As already mentioned, the community for Minetest as a whole is pretty small and that additionally split among so many different games building on that. But it's good that viable alternatives exist in case Microsoft ever considers shutting down the Java edition.

Edit: Typo
- But it’s good that viable alternatives exist in case Microsoft ever considers shutting down the Java edition.
  
  I had never even considered that as a possibility but now it seems all too possible and I'm gonna have to sit with that for a while...
Only thing missing imo is a native mob API, the lua implementations are always laggy and buggy. But the Valleys mapgen is beautiful.
They are different beasts
I'm still stuck mostly on 1.7.10 and 1.12.2 modpacks, I don't play as much these days though.

Awaited menu redesign and Minetest will be perfect.

You might be waiting for a few decades. I don't think UI design is what foss is known for (outside of gnome)

What would be cool is of they could make Minetest support third party launchers.
- Third party launchers are the LAST thing we need, and would provide no benefit that the game itself doesn't already provide.
  
  Minecraft needs launchers because of the lack of built-in mod support and the fact that its closed source. Minetest is the opposite of these things.
- outside of gnome
  
  For being bad I hope, lol.
- Not really. A few of their developers have been redeveloping the menus. They redesigned the settings menu and it looks great. They're redesigning the content db pages and home pages. Some designs have been put out and I wouldn't be surprised if we saw something in the next few versions.
  
  Edit: Changes are pretty close now:
  
  https://github.com/minetest/minetest/pull/14510
- You might be waiting for a few decades.
  
  UI redesign should be coming in 5.10.
  
  I don't think UI design is what foss is known for (outside of gnome)
  
  ? There's many more DEs (and not only) with beautiful design. Gnome is not something incredible here. And I can even argue about libadwaita being beautiful.
  
  What would be cool is of they could make Minetest support third party launchers.
  
  Why would you need that? What benefits outside of using other UI framework like GTK it can provide?
The issue for the redesign has reached it's seventh anniversary
- It's gradually getting there. The settings redesign was introduced a few versions ago, and the online content menu redesign will hopefully land in the next version (and potentially replace the current content tab after that). I agree that the main menu redesign might be a while away though.

Can anyone recommend any cool mods/projects built on top of Minetest?

https://content.minetest.net/

I like Technic and Ethernal
I would recommend some of APercy's mods like the Ju52 and the Super Cub

Are there any mods for it? How's performance compared to minecraft?

My brother in Christ, the entire game is mod based. The default unmaintained Minetest Game isn't even preinstalled in new versions.

Performance wise it will blow Minecraft out of the water usually. However, keep in mind it still doesn't scale between cores very well. Before it was all single core but now it has support for multi core although performance is still limited on high core count CPUs.
- Can it do splitscreen natively without requiring things a 5 year old couldn't do?
Performance depends on the mod. I have a server in my house that has a Minecraft and Minetest server installed so we can play locally. The Minetest server is extremely laggy. Rubberbanding all the time. But we play it more than Minecraft.

Love me playing some Minetest with the Asuna game. It's the perfect expansion of the basic game formula and a beautiful world to put other mods on top of.

It has some minor quarks but for the most part I agree.

I also like Ethernal combined with other mods

It's kind of hard to me playing Minetest. Not only for the fact that I don;t think Minecraft is that much fun, but also because the Android version has a confusing UI and weird controls.

I'm restricted to playing the Android version because, I don;t have a PC, duh!

I don't play minecraft because 1. I am not creative and am at a lost without a objective goal and 2. I get dizzy with the open world.
- I just wanted to say that I personally can't stand tuna mac. The tuna covers it all in tuna grease and it ruins it all.
- I don’t play Minecraft because it is too trippy alone.
  
  I build this Moria kind of place and realize it’s scary to the point I am constantly glancing behind me in the tunnels.
  
  I usually either play games 12 hours straight or not at all (adhd?). They all become slightly trippy but Minecraft is seriously eerie after such time and solitude becomes unbearable.
- Have you tried modoacks? A lot if them have a quest book and a goal and some(skyblock* modpacks) dont have an open world, only the sky* and a small island
  
  *sky can refer to stone and bedrock
- For a second there I thought you were hating on the guy.
- Me too

I've been having fun with VoxeLibre lately on single-player mode. Nothing too fancy, gameplay is eerily similar to vanilla Minecraft. I'm looking forward to trying other games built on the engine that offer a bit more variation.

One nice thing is that the android version of Minetest is compatible with the PC version, so it is possible to sync save files and play on the go. It also seems to load faster than Minecraft does.

Any mod recommendations for a 5 year old? He's got a laptop with Debian on it and I'd like to set him up with MineTest, but I'm not sure he can handle the full MineClonia experience.

There are plenty. I would look at Minetest Education along with some of the games.

You also could look at the KDE kid games app