I mean I feel stupid typing it now, but I’ve been using Windows since I was 5 years old, and Linux for about 30 days. It was not apparent to me that many of my folders were actually shortcuts to stuff in my user directory, and now that I know to look out for them the location of my applications make sooo much more sense.
Adding on to Windows: There’s no way (in the UI) to add symlinks. In Windows 10, symlinks must be created in an administrative command prompt. It is pretty damn clunky.