Installable packages are already available for a few distributions. However, I have only been able to install and use it on Linux Mint 12 and Fedora 16 (see how to install Cinnamon on Fedora 16).

Though I have been able to install it on Ubuntu 11.10, every attempt to use it has failed. As soon as I figure out why it does not seem to be usable on Ubuntu 11.10, I will post it. Cinnamon’s menu and panel have a few aspects that can be configured by right-clicking, but a few others need to be configured with the gconf-editor. This article shows how to install and use gconf-editor on Fedora 16 and Linux Mint 12 to modify them.