The more popular a piece of software is, the more likely it is to have had the bugs worked out of it, the more people there are reporting issues, the more answers there are on StackOverflow, the more likely AI/LLMs are to be able to answer questions, the more secure it's likely to be, the more stuff interoperates with it, etc. Popularity alone isn't a good reason to select something, but it's a good data point, with which so judge viability.