The kids all seem to use tablets or windows with bedrock though, my own are the odd ones out with Java on Linux.

A lot of windows users use java on windows too.

I do think that I have yet to see a bedrock player on windows as compared to java player on windows & I have been playing minecraft for so long and joined so many discord communities of minecraft related as well and that's my experience.

Java is really peak minecraft, with modpacks as well. You should try out prismlauncher, its open source and works quite smoothly on linux and you can try a lot of modpacks which the bedrock players can't play.

Fabuously Optimized is a must have modpack given how efficient it can make minecraft / give fps boosts