The Linux way of installing the apps is merely a convenient tradition. You can still put the app files anywhere and run. It will put its configuration files wherever the developer wanted them (conventionally the app dir is meant to be immutable and the files are meant to be stored under the user's home dir though). In fact many apps (incl. Chrome and PyCharm actually are installed the Windows way under /opt which is an equivalent to C:\Program Files\).
> there are attempts (Snap)
I actually hate this concept because it encourages duplication (same program files installed under different users) and adds performance overhead (often significant). So, when no traditional package is available I rather get an AppImage and just drop it in \opt (the downside is it won't automatically appear in the menus though so I have to create .desktop files and update the app itself manually).
This also seems very bad for the office setting. I have dozens of employees set-up on dozens Ubuntu computers in the office and want a single-install/update to apply to everyone seamlessly. Now I see Firefox moved to Snap in Ubuntu 21.10 and this scares the shit out of me, but it's supposed to be possible to force it the traditional way in 21.10. They say they will move it to snap only in 22.04 though so I will probably abandon Ubuntu and switch to some distro which is not corrupted by this bullshit. This is sad as Ubuntu still is the most polished and muggle-friendly out of the box, their GNOME mod in particular.