Debian's past
As you might know, Debian Linux is by far the grandfather of most Linux distributions, including the most popular and most known, Ubuntu. Believe it or not, even being one of the Linux distributions which started a lot of it, it doesn't receive as much updates as other distros, like ubuntu. But now it looks different, it looks like Debian has decided to rise up, and release Debian 9 very soon, the date is not completely confirmed, but as far as anyone knows, it's this year.
Debian 9 features
As far as I know, I have personally used Debian 9, and it comes with the kernel version 9, and the most updated packages in their repositories. More info on the new features debian 9 comes with is on this links:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2017/01/msg00004.html
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2017/02/msg00000.html
Popularity
As far as popularity, it has increased quite a lot because some youtuber like Don't Call Me Lenny, BoBuntu Linux, Linux & Other Stuff and many more are talking about how debian 9 could be one of their main operating system, and believe it or not, most of them didn't like debian until now
By the way, this is my first post, so don't expect it to be perfect, so if you see a mistake or something, just tell me and I'll fix it. Thank you!