>So you pay for the product and then need to download some unofficial shady East European software to remove unwanted features? Ridiculous.

Get your facts straight. A quick check of wikipedia will reveal it's open source and written by Pete Batard from Ireland, not "some unofficial shady East European software".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rufus_(software)

https://akeo.ie/

Meanwhile "linux" incorporates software from overworked volunteers that willingly handed over control to some shady threat actor that successfully backdoored it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor