> Cinnamon seems to be forgotten/underappreciated, I really enjoy using it. I've tried a range of different desktops environments, and I end up finding cinnamon just does what I expect, with reasonable defaults.

The Linux Mint Cinnamon version is actually pretty good: https://linuxmint.com/download.php

But also, XFCE has always worked well enough - it's lightweight, responsive and has most of the features you'd expect, albeit little to no eye candy.