There’s multiple free versions and forcing HDR on isn’t a basic feature by any means.

And yet, it's a simple toggle (sometimes multiple, for specific display flows) in GNOME, KDE, and Windows 10+.

A far as I understand Windows only has a toggle for HDR on vs off, that's not what we're talking about here, this is about forcing the full brightness of HDR always, even outside videos. It's something that manufacturers don't allow for as it reduces display life, it would actually be an anti-feature for a consumer OS to expose as a setting. It'd be like exposing some sort of setting to allow your CPU to go well beyond normal heat limits.