>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

True, even Microsoft once recommended Rufus in instructions for some of their msdn ISOs. Not sure if they still do though.

Well I guess I made a mistake, don't remember why I thought that Rufus is from Eastern Europe.

It doesn't. It just chooses the minimal data collection option for you during the install.

Actually turning it all off requires very deep modification of the OS.