If people "get into" Linux via Omarchy - then decide its roots are distateful, distro hopping is very easy for them to do.

My point is that they might not ever get to the point of noticing the rot at its roots. Sure, if they notice it's easy, but they need to even get to that point. Also, even if we know it's easy, it might still be intimidating. They may remember how much work the jump from Windows/Apple to Omarchy was and assume it's gonna be similar from one Linux distro to another.

If you 18 million number refers to Omarchy's own download count

I was referring to donation amounts. 18 million dollars. That's the most recent number I've seen that has been donated or promised to Omarchy, and that kind of money can do a whole lot when it's pumped into reputation building.

I find it a stretch to think that Omarchy will be whitewashing brownshirt politics sufficiently to win converts because "hey, these guys are alright, look at what a nifty distro they made..."

Then you're more optimistic than me. Those politics are not advertised on the frontpage*, and most people who are not already tuned into that are not gonna go hunting for it. For most it's not gonna go further than "Oh my favorite tech influencer is rocking this awesome looking setup, gonna try that", and from there on why would they look at anything other than the docs.

* They do have that "Backed by the oligarchy" section, and I immediately wanted to vomit when seeing that, but colleagues of mine didn't see the issue with that until I explicitly spelled it out. We very much do live in a bubble.