They're close, but I don't think they're the exact ini format, here's ours for example which has bad coloring under the ini language:

I think this is an issue with the ini language definition, not .desktop files. Inline comments shouldn’t be allowed.

E.g. from https://editorconfig.org/ (also in the extensions list):

EditorConfig files use an INI format that is compatible with the format used by Python ConfigParser Library, […truncated…] and octothorpes (#) or semicolons (;) are used for comments. Comments should go on their own lines.

>>> import configparser
>>> parser = configparser.ConfigParser()
>>> parser.read_string("""
... [foo]
... bar = baz; fooz
... """)
>>> parser.get('foo', 'bar')
'baz; fooz'
>>>

Another source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INI_file#Comments

I don’t think there’s an official standard for the ini format.

Given the slight differences I would not add the association. The comment highlighting is quite useful and we don't want to remove it. But it will confuse users that open a .desktop file.

Sorry for that...