I'm a super new player but come from a combat flight sim background, and Elite is my first space sim. The lack of PVP is really surprising for me, I've played in Open exclusively and it's hard to find another player, let alone get some PVP in.
This sort surprises me, because compared to other MMO-style games I've played, I find Elite to be extremely non-punitive for loss. As long as you fly with a rebuy you can get back whatever you lost, and with mining being so lucrative, once you have a few hundred million in the bank - which is like, three or four mining trips, even in a small-ish ship? - I just don't have stress over loss at all.
From my perspective, FDev has offered huge amounts of ways to avoid loss - it feels extremely carebear on the scale of these things, and certainly compared to other games I've experienced. All of this would seem to be to encourage play in Open, but this thread demonstrates that actually, even with the near-removal of loss, plenty of people and maybe even the majority would rather play in Solo.
I've only been ganked twice, in both instances these "gankers" sent me friend requests and have gone on to completely reach out to me and help me learn the game. In the second instance, I got blown up, but immediately respawned, went and found my attacker, and interdicted him. We sparred a bit and he let me line up shots and really tried to help me get some practice in. So far, my impression is that the PVP community in this game is actually awesome, and really supportive. Sure, they might blow up your ship, but then they immediately offer help to make your ship better. And in a game where loss doesn't matter, I think that's cool.