I run Ubuntu. I recently became tired of Unity - no problem, it just does not work for the way I think - so I installed a Cinnamon nightly to use on Ubuntu. I essentially have Mint now on my development machine, but without the long and dangerous process of backup, re-install, restore, and re-building apps from source (there are a few I need that do not have packages available).
Nothing flashy or "ooh! wow!" about Cinnamon - it just works. I like categorized menus - they help me. I'm one of those people who cannot remember application names. I can't tell you how many times I would go into the Unity menu and sit there thinking "what was that called, what was that called, what was that called...". Unity did not have an easy way to get to categorized menus, and when you do, you often have to scroll through a short horizontal list. That, and Unity would often show me the "working wheel" for about 5+ seconds when I clicked for the menus.
Cinnamon shows the categories right there. That helps me a lot. I guess if I was building from new. I would either go Ubuntu for fast updates and support, or Mint with Cinnamon for the way I work.