A desktop environment is just a set of bits like anything else you run on a computer - you can download your environment to a USB stick or DVD/CD - whatever. Download the .rpm or .deb and put it anywhere you want.

One thing I would say is that you should be more concerned about your machine resources than looking like Windows. The basics are identical for all graphical desktops. If you can use Windows, then you can use any Linux desktop, except with Linux you can always fall back on a decent command-line interface. I've never used power shell so I don't know what Windows is like now, but Linux/Unix was designed for command line first, GUIs second.

I know that I use Xfce - lightweight, but I prefer that to heavy (i.e. slow) KDE or Gnome behemoths - but YMMV. Even decent machines can be swamped by the heavier desktops.

A desktop environment is just a set of bits like anything else you run on a computer - you can download your environment to a USB stick or DVD/CD - whatever. Download the .rpm or .deb and put it anywhere you want.

One thing I would say is that you should be more concerned about your machine resources than looking like Windows. The basics are identical for all graphical desktops. 

If you can use Windows, then you can use any Linux desktop, except with Linux you can always fall back on a decent command-line interface. I've never used power shell so I don't know what Windows is like now, but Linux/Unix was designed for command line first, GUIs second.

I know that I use Xfce - lightweight, but I prefer that to heavy (i.e. slow) KDE or Gnome behemoths - but YMMV. Even decent machines can be swamped by the heavier desktops.