I am running SalixOS exclusively (alongside Windows for when I must have full-blown MS Office) on two of the laptops that get the most use in our household. I like it because it is fast and stable.
Another distro I have fallen in love with is Mageia. Yes, it does have systemd but for those who don't have a problem with it, want bleeding edge (the opposite of SalixOS), and don't mind living on the edge... I recommend doing a Mageia install and getting familiar with it. The current version is 9. Once you are comfortable with it, go to their wiki and roll it over to Cauldron. Even though it is bleeding edge, the problems I've encountered are infrequent... nothing like when I was using Arch based distros and had to spend hours searching how to fix problems that occurred at least once per month and sometimes required booting from a USB to repair (kernel panics).
I use Cinnamon desktop on my Mageia installations. The live install doesn't have a Cinnamon option but you can install XFCE and then use their software install tool to add task-cinnamon and then just select that from the desktop manager. It's fantastic and the devs are wonderful. Because I am using Cauldron, I sometimes find a bug. I report it and they usually fix it quickly. There are a few more bugs with Cinnamon than KDE or XFCE simply because it isn't as high a priority for them but the have one person who maintains Cinnamon and they really do a fantastic job. I don't know why they rank so low, especially compared to the Ubuntu based distros (except for Mint) because I've tried all of the top 10s and my person opinion is that Mageia Cauldron is better than Fedora Rawhide or OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. The updates are way smoother.
Fedora Cinnamon spin on their main distro as a good choice for people who love Mint but want to try something different. However, Mageia is just as good and needs more support. If you have time and want to try out another fantastic independent distro, I highly recommend Mageia... even for beginners.