My parents have this old 2015 MacBook Air that they wanted to use but couldn’t due to no security updates and slow running. I convinced them to let me load up fedora on it instead of junking it. They only really need it for some basic document writing, email, and web surfing so I figured this is perfect for them.
Made a bootable drive with Fedora 43 work station on it, figured gnome would be the most Apple like spin. Everything went super smooth until I realized that the WiFi drivers weren’t installed lol. I also didn’t have a Ethernet adapter for usb-a so I had to overnight it to me while my parents swore I bricked their Mac all night. Got the adapter this AM, hooked it up, installed the drivers and other necessary tweaks, and viola! This Mac has new life.
So far my parents are liking it and understanding it (even though my mom seems more excited about the snoopy wallpaper and Firefox theme, lol). Getting their emails on thunderbird was driving me crazy. Nothing to do with thunderbird, they just didn’t know their passwords smh. All in all not bad. To new Linux converts
In this case, I would say Gnome was a good choice.
Just looking the same as macOS would not be the real requirement, as long as the user gets a sense of familiarity.
You really want to give them as simple a configuration system as possible, for which Gnome is a good idea.
I won't be going to Gnome, because I am fine with putting a few extra seconds to understand the options to get the high configurability in return but that might not be the case for OP's parents.
And if some specific unavailable feature was required, they would probably ask OP, who can then install a corresponding extension.