Is there any way around this? Why is Windows doing this? Don't get me wrong, I got the laptop to install a Linux distro anyway, but it's helpful for others (especially my older family members) to just use Windows when they need to print a paper or do a small task, so I would have liked to keep it. Microsoft really lost me here.
Edit:
Thanks everyone for the answers. For reasons I will not delve into now, I ended up installing Windows 10 from the official iso Image, then upgrading to Windows 11. This is the longest and shittiest way to avoid the login as it simply used the local account I created on Windows 10, and that's the road I took (not recommended). Also I ended up installing Mint with dual boot and I love it. I have windows on the smallest partition size possible (about 66G).
nixOS is great. It's got one additional step of difficulty from just pure Ubuntu, but it's designed to be as robust as possible and it's basically impossible to break.
Windows wise, there's some email address that you can type in to bypass the process. Beyond that as far as I know Windows 11 won't let you delay or skip this step, you have to have an account to install Windows 11 and it has to be a valid account that the OS can log in to. Maybe it's time to consider switching.