It’s been a while since I’ve used Gnome, but back when I did I also felt it lacked a lot of configurability much like the Mac.
In comparison, KDE felt a lot more like Windows (or how Windows used to be in the past) where you could configure and tweak all sorts of things.
If you’re comfortable with swapping out components in your PC, just buy a second SSD. Remove the Windows drive, put Linux on the new drive. If Linux doesn’t work out for you, just swap them back.
You could also run a live Linux distribution from a USB stick, or potentially install Linux onto a USB stick or SD.