Well, I don't know which trendy distro the dev is referring, but Debian is complete opposite of Trendy. It's a bedrock distro silently running almost everywhere in some form or shape.

Most of the Linux-based (enterprise and/or embedded) appliances are built upon Debian, for example.

P.S.: The total number of Debian installations and their derivatives are unknown BTW. Debian installations and infra do not collect such information. You can install "popularity-contest", but the question defaults to "no" during installation, so most people do not send in package selection lists, unlike Canonical's tracking of snap installations.