It's a fork of Gnome but its well maintined, very familliar to windows users, and very reliable.
I personally pefer KDE but Cinnamon is likely a better choice for new users.
Not to mention, Mint itself is a super reliable distro. I use Fedora but keep my partner on Mint and she has maybe 10% of the issues I do.
Gotta love the party of small government and free market capitalism.