What they really meant is it's like Windows if Windows didn't enshittify.

I don't understand the plasma desktop though. Why can't I just drag a shortcut to the desktop.

Plasma has very strong opinions about what the desktop is. So strong that it probably disagrees with every single person.

The other side of the news is that the desktop abstraction has been made more and more useless on every OS for a couple of decades already. In any other OS your life will only improve if you abandon it too.