The amount of dark patterns on Windows nowadays is insane. If you want to go through the OOTB setup and use a local account, you'd better not connect to a network (which it's very pushy at getting you to do.) It's literally not an option to set up a local account in most cases. I've rarely touched Windows in the last decade and I'm better for it.
In Windows 11 Home 22H2, it's practically impossible to set up without a network connection, which has been a huge pain for me since my mobo's onboard ethernet drivers aren't included (too new, I guess). It's been at least 15 years since I needed to side-load a driver during an OS install to be able to complete it successfully, and the last time was a niche Linux distro. The so-called "workarounds" online are hit-or-miss.
What I've done is sign in using some throwaway account on setup, create a new local user once logged in, login to the new local user, and delete the old user with the Microsoft account.
I think you can also simply unlink and sign out of the Microsoft account once logged in to effectively make it a local user, but your user folder is stuck using the username of the Microsoft account, which also gets cutoff after like 8 characters.
I abhor the whole process and it's annoying because there's no other way to create a local account during Windows 11 setup on e.g., a laptop because it knows that the wifi module works and will not let you progress unless you connect to the internet. I tried unplugging my modem and connecting to my internet-less router, but it still refused to progress because it didn't have internet access.
Don't even get me started on the other dark patterns once you actually have a local user setup, like being pushed through part of the OOTB Windows setup again after a major feature update asking you to login into a Microsoft account and making sure you still want all the (user accessible) telemetry off.
The worst part is that I actually like Windows 11 and some of the new features like the tiling layouts when hovering over the maximize button on a window, the new default terminal program, etc. But, the whole thing is entirely soured by dark patterns like the aforementioned forceful use of a Microsoft account, all the extra Edge and Bing crap being shoved down my throat, the poor web-first Windows search, widgets just basically being an MSN feed, Teams starting at login by default on a new install, random apps and games being advertised in the start menu on a new install, etc.
My point is that there’s a small loophole still open actionable for powerusers right now but that won’t be the case for too long. Probably the best thing is to start migrating to a different platform, or at least start thinking about it.
That's a fair point, but even if they got rid of this loophole, I'm sure there'd still be a registry or group policy loophole. I'd totally switch to Linux if it wasn't for my gaming library, my Nvidia card, and some of the software that I use that is either Windows only or works better on Windows, like the Affinity suite, Blender, UE5, etc. I know the latter two support Linux, but it goes back to the Nvidia card and they simply run better on Windows, at least from my experience. Proton also seems like a pain requiring Steam/Lutris to manage different versions of Proton/Wine, plus a good chunk of my gaming library isn't supported.
So instead of keeping a windows machine exclusively for your old catalog of games you likely rarely play and only buying new games which run under Linux, you're gonna keep upgrading through whatever nightmare path remains available just so your main PC can run those games?
Or is it that you're so concerned with experiencing specific games which will come out only for windows that you're willing to suffer that he'll?
Because really... Your comment makes you seem irrationally attached to windows only games....
I only have the one machine and I'm not buying another just to move to Linux. Maybe when it's time to upgrade, I'll go for an AMD GPU and move to a Linux distro.
Regardless, I mentioned other software besides video games and there's more besides what I listed. I've already gone through the process of making Windows less of a nightmare that it's not a problem for me right now. So no, I don't think it's irrational, regardless of video games, to go through the headache of dealing with Linux distros right now, which I've done plenty of in the past and is its own hell that I'd have to suffer.
In order to get out of using the M$ft account for my dad on win11 I had to disable secure boot, use regedit, etc and it was all very dark and time consuming. Microsoft is The Worst.
There are much easier solutions than that. I've not tried the sibling's idea, but just not connecting it to wifi, pressing shift+f10 and running "oobe\BypassNRO" is enough. It's still ridiculous and shameful behaviour from Microsoft, but disabling secureboot isn't necessary.
That works for the initial logon attempt, but after that the computer was locked in “S mode” where it doesnt allow you to install anything. In order to get chrome running we had to do the above.
I was seriousy shocked of all the abuse when I had to install a new winblows laptop for a relative. How is any of it legal? How the hell did we let it happen? Mindblowing.
Windows 10 (not even 11) was so annoying on the last random laptop that I'm not dealing with it again. And I gotta stress how low my bar is. I don't care about privacy or anything on random spare PCs, I just want it to work without harassing me constantly, and up until now it was tolerable. Idk what a dark pattern is, my word for this is "dogshit." It's more annoying than dealing with Ubuntu's random issues at this point.
AFAIK you only need an iCloud account to use iCloud related features, like the app store, syncing across devices, access to Apple services, etc. It's very much usable with just a local user.
Admittedly, they do heavily suggesting connecting an iCloud account.
You also literally can't even launch an iPhone past the initial screens without creating/logging into an Apple account. At least Google lets you use an Android phone without forcing an account.
> If you want to go through the OOTB setup and use a local account, you'd better not connect to a network (which it's very pushy at getting you to do.)
Pulling the ethernet plug to get a local account doesn't even work anymore. The only trick I know still works is to give it a fake account (like test@test.com).
