Best Cinnamon distro

[COMECON]

I think that if you want cinnamon then you should use Mint, of course! You can choose between Mint and LMDE, the main Mint is based on Ubuntu and LMDE is based on Debian...
I currently dual-boot Kubuntu and Mint Cinnamon, and this August I just used Mint with Cinnamon, I just uninstalled it because I wanted to try something, but you can work and do whatever with it -just like KDE, not like Unity!
And, if you want to try Cinnamon on a rolling release like Arch, I recommend you installing Arch and then installing Cinnamon, rather than Cinnarch. It's pure and KISS! If you don't feel comfortable installing it, you should try it first on a virtual machine. You'll see it's not difficult as they tell!

[Bart_D]

Alright, so I tried both Cinnarch and Linux Mint. Peppermint does not seem to have Cinnamon:
http://peppermintos.com/about-peppermint/

As far as the best Cinnamon based distro goes, that is an easy one. It is Linux Mint 13 by a country mile! It is not even close. Cinnarch is very far behind and nowhere near close to being ready.

I had recently tried Linux Mint Debian Edition and I have also tried Linux mint LXDE. Linux Mint 13 (Cinnamon) is a step up from both of those. Linux Mint 13 just feels like such a complete distribution. It has everything fine tuned and set out-of-the-box. I am dual-booting it now along with Ubuntu. The theming is brilliant, as usual, and it feels so smooth. The start menu is stunning.

I will continue to have the latest version of Ubuntu installed, simply because it is the standard bearer BUT, moving forward, my primary distro will be the Cinnamon flavor of Linux Mint. Nothing compares.

EDIT: As far as installing cinnamon on top of Ubuntu, well, that is what Linux Mint does along with fine-tuning that I have no interest in wasting my time on. If Mint gives me all the tweaks then there is no sense in me wasting my time re-inventing the wheel by starting with Ubuntu and building on top of that.

As far as the possibility of a minimal install + Cinnamon:
From my experience with a minimal Arch + Gnome 3, I found that my custom installation was not even close to what I got out-of-the-box with Fedora. The same would apply here. If I started with Ubuntu minimal and tried to add Cinnamon, I would never come close to the polished gem that is Linux Mint. I'd just be wasting my time.

EDIT2: You know, I've always wondered why distrowatch keeps showing Linux Mint at number 1 on their list, ahead of Ubuntu and Fedora:
http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity

It just didn't make much sense to me why they would get so many hits. I just did not understand what all the fuss was about. Now I can see, first hand, why that is the case.

[Ashtonford]

Install cinnamon on ubuntu and try it out.

Linux is modular. Pair the best distro with the best desktop environment.

that would be mint 13 with cinnamon

[robert shearer]

As far as installing cinnamon on top of Ubuntu, well, that is what Linux Mint does along with fine-tuning that I have no interest in wasting my time on. If Mint gives me all the tweaks then there is no sense in me wasting my time re-inventing the wheel by starting with Ubuntu and building on top of that.

As a long time Ubuntu user, not overly enamoured with Unity, I found the addition of the Cinnamon desktop to a minimal Lubuntu install to be much more navigable than vanilla Mint Cinnamon.
I have both installed and find the Ubuntu with Cinnamon to be more responsive and has support from a larger userbase... ie Ubuntu.

Either would be preferable to vanilla Ubuntu with Unity for my hardware and applications and would wholeheartedly recommend both as a replacement to the Unity Desktop.
Those with newer hardware may be totally satisfied with Ubuntu + Unity and I support this too.