Sadly almost all of the answers below stopped working after updates closed those avenues of bypass. I'd just create a new account and ignore it.
Windows 11
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The disconnect from the interwebs trick and the other tips below should work. If you to install linux make sure to look up what is supported so far and what potentially needs work. Nowadays most things work OOTB save for some webcams with Windows Hello support :)
I’m pretty sure you can just Alt+F4 that and it’ll let you create a local account. IIRC, that’s what I did on my W11 laptop.
You can set up offline account. Just search for it. In worst case, you can do it through command line.
Install Linux from a usb key.
Install windows into a virtual machine.
You can get your windows product key from Linux by following this https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-find-windows-10-oem-product-key-command/
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.
not if you install linux lol
Yeah that was the plan. Turns out however that Ubuntu, Mint, and Arch and a bunch of other distros all recommend installing Windows first to avoid issues caused by Windows itself (so dual boot is the safest option).
Sadly because I was so fucking pissed at this in the screenshot, I ended up trying to install Arch without setting up Windows first, fucked up my partitions, and spent this entire morning reinstalling Windows from an ISO Image (the Windows 10 worked but not 11 and this Lenovo doesn't have Audio or TouchPad drivers for Windows 10 so here I am wasting more of this mortal time I have to upgrade to Windows 11, make sure all drivers are working for the few occasions I will be forced to use Windows, and then reattempt to set up Arch Linux or Mint).
Tl;dr: Best to install windows first, then Linux. And also fuck Microsoft.
good god.
OP literally said "I got the laptop to install a Linux distro anyway, but it’s helpful for"
i did not read the post 😎