Why wait for Microsoft to catch up with what we've been doing for decades?
Get Plasma, a modern, fully functional, clean, privacy-respecting, non-intrusive operating system now, regardless from where you live and ditch Windows for good.
KDE is an international technology team creating user-friendly free and open source software for desktop and portable computing. KDE’s software runs on GNU/Linux, BSD and other operating systems, including Windows.
If you encounter a bug, proceed to https://bugs.kde.org, check whether it has been reported.
If it hasn't, report it yourself.
PLEASE THINK CAREFULLY BEFORE POSTING HERE.
Developers do not look for reports on social media, so they will not see it and all it does is clutter up the feed.
You are right. Also, a desktop environment, at least from an end user's perspective, is as part of the OS as a kernel, terminal, and its associated tools. We are just using the language that a non-techie can understand and act upon.
Either way, "operating system" is a woolly and ambiguous term that is hard to define precisely and changes meanings depending on who you ask. The common denominator in common non technical English seems to be "software that allows you to manage you hardware and applications". If that is so, yep, Plasma fits the bill.