Emphasis on it was. It started to go downhill with Amazon integration and now we have paid security updates. They are holding back developed and available security packages for their OS!
There is no way to still recommend Ubuntu. No need to even talk about the other questionable decisions like snap.
It is a fork, meaning its like ubuntu but with the bullshit that makes ubuntu bad removed. It is completly safe but if you wanna stay clear of any trace of ubuntu at all there is also a debian based version of mint
I would recommend only community maintained distros at this point... seing as how RH and Canonical went to the dark side for some things, I'd rather not recommend something maintaned by a company.