I use OSMC for all the RPis connected to TVs in the house and have no major complaints from a daily-driver standpoint. Can’t speak to your specific use case requirements, but is just flashing an extra SD Card and testing it out of the question?

Cinnamon uses Nemo.

It might not be a feature you’re interested in re: your music (or photo) collection, but one thing I missed when switching from Windows was the folder previews showing album cover art. I’ve been using Cover Thumbnailer (on Linux Mint 21.3) and it’s been working great.