In fairness, program files, templates, docs, settings, and examples on Windows are often in some mix of
C:/Program Files (x86)/VendorName/FooProg
C:/Users/Me/AppData/Local/FooProg
C:/Users/Me/My Documents/FooProg/
C:/VendorName/FooProg (I'm looking at you, AMD)
The registry (which is sorta like /etc, and often abused to store stuff like recent searches, etc)
Linux is definitely worse on that front I agree, but let's not pretend Windows is super-consistent about file locations. I only say this after much frustration recently trying to find things.