Cinnamon vs KDE

[Cookiehead]

Hello,
I was thinking about installing Debian or a debian-based distro on an old HP Pavilion dv6000 which only supports 32-bit.
I used a VM to simulate the specs of the laptop to get an estimate of how it would run, and I can't choose between KDE or LMDE 6's Cinnamon. They both have similar CPU and RAM usage. I just wanted to get the community's opinion on both, and which one they think is better/more stable. Which desktop environment do you guys think is better?

Spoiler: Laptop specifications if you need them

Intel Pentium T2060 (2 cores, 1.60GHz), 1GB RAM (which I will be upgrading to 2GB), 120GB HDD (which I will be upgrading to a 256GB SSD). The default OS, Windows 7, ran decently fast with aero off.

 

[Brickwizard]

Which desktop environment do you guys think is better?

That would be a more personal choice. Both have their own following who, will. Sing their praises, with over 20 Linux DE's all with a following it's, your choice. You could also consider LXQT [some say its faster] or Xfce [with reminiscence of the XP look.] a list can be found. on this article... https://opensource.com/article/20/5/linux-desktops

 

[kc1di]

As a long time KDE users I of course would prefer KDE. But Cinnamon is also a good choice. I find KDE a bit more responsive and it's highly configurable to your needs /style of operating. One of the reasons I moved from Mint was because they dropped KDE support sometime ago. Don't get me wrong Cinnamon is a great DE in it's own right. I just prefer KDE. But It's personal choice not because one is better than the other. I recommend to people try them both and choose the one they feel most comfortable with. In fact for a older 32 bit machine I would most likely choose XFCE4.

 

[CaffeineAddict]

+1 to ^above

I'm KDE fan too, there is nothing missing in KDE desktop to make me not like it.

 

[Aristarchus]

I am big fan of KDE using it as long as it was available.. but I would suggest (if you want lean) openbox or tiling WM.
You noted that KDE and Cinnamon are using similarly your box resources: what is CPU and RAM usage when idle (on my box KDE uses 0.5% CPU when idle). You can optimize your KDE/Cinnamon of course but I doubt that you can get ~100MB memory use and below 1%CPU.
With low overhead you will be able to listen music, browse internet and in short enjoy your Linux