"Correct" way to install with only Cinnamon and sddm

New laptop, I want to install linux on this machine. I've tried a couple of window managers in a VM and settled on Cinnamon as wm and SDDM as DM.

I'd also prefer to have a Ubuntu like system as a base (for things like package manager and basically bigger community to search in case I have issues).

As far as I know, there are no distributions that have cinnamon as their installed window (unless maybe Mint Cinnamon edition?).

I'd prefer not to have other window managers and too much additional crap that I won't use. So installing a full Ubuntu and then add cinnamon is not my preferred way to go.

Should I just install Ubuntu server (so that I don't install a window manager but have a base system) and then install cinnamon on top of that? Or is that a bad idea?

You may try the ubuntu cinnamon remix that has Ubuntu as core featuring the Cinnamon as desktop environment. The link is here