Windows 3.11 docked applications onto the "desktop" when you minimized them so no, not really.
It's not really taking inspiration as much as trying new things. Everyone has copied over the desktop because everybody else did so, all the way back to when Apple first ripped off Xerox's GUI. Even on Windows I disable all the clutter of desktop icons that programs will randomly add to my desktop because they deem themselves important.
I personally don't see the benefit, but people who do can pick a distro that writes a well-integrated desktop icon addon (apparently, not Ubuntu).
Apparently so does every recent OS, e.g. Windows, Mac, ios, Android,.... . They all feature an app drawer/launcher/start menu quite prominently and that is always not the desktop.
Having one window of the files app always open, removing all window decorations and calling it "desktop" can be good, but I won't pretend that there isn't an overarching movement away from that.
It's not really taking inspiration as much as trying new things. Everyone has copied over the desktop because everybody else did so, all the way back to when Apple first ripped off Xerox's GUI. Even on Windows I disable all the clutter of desktop icons that programs will randomly add to my desktop because they deem themselves important.
I personally don't see the benefit, but people who do can pick a distro that writes a well-integrated desktop icon addon (apparently, not Ubuntu).