In other words: people who like the current status quo are less likely to make themselves heard than those who want something changed. So the trends you tried to extrapolate from the HN discussion may be biased.
As an anecdote, that was exactly my experience. I'm one of those light-weight desktop Linux users. I've only experienced Windwos, OSx and Ubuntu. I can say that I really enjoy the current Ubuntu UI, but due to lack of knowledge of Wayland and whatevery, I'm disinclined to speak up.
I'm pretty sure their decision to drop Unity was already done (internally) even before Dustin started the suggestions thread. So this conclusion isn't necessarily accurate.
To get more unbiased input one might try something like http://www.allourideas.org/ . This method of priorisation and feedback gathering is much better than "more votes = higher priority". The downside is lack of comments/discussion.
I also wonder how representative HN users really are, but maybe that's less of a concern with a product like desktop Linux which hardly has any nontechnical users in the first place.
