Cinnamon is a GNOME Shell fork created by Clement Lefebvre, the Linux Mint founder, which tries to offer a layout similar to GNOME 2: a bottom panel with launchers, GNOME2-like systray and notifications and more.

panel autohide

the Overview Hot Corner or icon can be disabled

menu improvements, including: right click the icons in the menu to "Add to panel", "Add to desktop", "Add/Remove to/from favorites" or configuring the "Menu" text

Panel Launchers now have tooltips

themes in ~/.themes are now detected

thumbnails from theme.json files in Gnome Shell themes are now used

windows in overview now feature icons for easier recognition

To enable/disable bottom panel autohide, change the menu text and so on, you'll need to use dconf-editor. Install it using the following command:

sudo apt-get install dconf-tools

Install Cinnamon

sudo apt-get install cinnamon-session

For a complete list of changes, see the release announcement Then launch dconf-editor and navigate to. Here you'll find all the available options.Installing Cinnamon won't break GNOME Shell so the two can be installed and used side-by-side.Once installed, log out and select "Cinnamon" in the login screen.