I just reinstalled Windows 11 and holy shit was it hard to setup without a Microsoft account. Like they even use a fake boot up screen weeks later to "finish the install" to trick you into making an account. This can be deactivated, but it is still super shady.
Holy shit that's annoying. Say I installed Win11 for my elderly parents. They'd get this sign-up screen after I would have thought everything was setup and ready to use.
Glad I installed elementary OS for them a few years ago, it's been completely painless (they are used to apple-UX)
Nice. Upgraded a Thinkpad, installed Linux Mint and gave it to my dad. I have not heard anything from him about it for a couple of months. Was reminded of it with your post.
So wrote him right now and asked how it was going, and he replied that he loved it and uses it every day.
And that he had not had any problems he could not solve on his own. He's 70 and a windows only heavy user - until now 🙂
Yup, I know what I'm doing, but someone else might have just assumed it was required. I was up and running for a week before a reboot sent me to the smiling windows install screen.
I found it's a pretty simple "don't ask to finish installing" switch in the settings, but escaping the install screen was the hard part. I think I had to do a hard power down and force safe mode to access the settings again.