What you just describes definitely works in modern versions of Nautilus. Just checked on fedora 34.
I have a nagging memory that this may not have worked in the past though.
I actually find Nautilus perfectly fine to use. My biggest gripe is sometimes it's difficult to right click to get a context menu that isn't a file selection (ie: to create a new folder when you're in the list view)
Instead of moving the files, the dragging action removes the selection, making it unusable for the most basic folder task.
Nautilus is so broken I prefer to use the console for most file related tasks.