I haven't used KDE (outside VMs) since like 2010, but have followed development somewhat. Just seems like it's easy to configure to have a Windows taskbar like experience.
I really like GNOME, and it is nice and simple, but I think new users might find the workflow different enough from what they're used to that it's not intuitive. I've been using GNOME for like a decade though.
I think both are probably easy enough to use with default settings, GNOME is just more of a departure from the conventions of proprietary OS shells.