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.

Even my phone has a desktop. It calls it a home screen, though.

The idea Plasma has of a desktop is very similar to the classical Android one, if that's ok for you.

Had classical Android the option to arrange virtual desktops in (practical) 3 by 3 to 5 by 5 grids, and mostly tile the apps fullscreen across that grid?

> Why can't I just drag a shortcut to the desktop.

You can...? I tried dragging from Dolphin, Kickoff and the Task Manager onto my desktop, and in all three cases it worked.

Granted, there's a moment of confusion having to choose between copying or linking, as offered by the context menu that pops up, but...

That option existed in Windows, too. Only you needed to press CTRL, shift, or whatever to make it appear, instead of whatever was the default, which I've forgotten, meanwhile.

Maybe because the start menu equivalent and the task bar are their own modules. They just come precondition, but you can use lots of alternatives. But I'm just guessing.