it's gonna be "funny": I won't create a personal account to login to crap 11 (because why should I, if you can't login to a desktop OS without a 3rd party account, that's not an OS, but a gatekeeper shit), which is mandatory. So, my work machine will become unusable, therefore in fact Microsoft put my work therefore my livelihood in danger.....
[edit: typos]
Just this week I installed W11 on a laptop (temporarily, I just wanted to see how it ran on this hardware), and despite being connected to the it asked me, by default, for a username for the local account. I don't know why, but it didn't ask for a MS account first.
Was this a recent windows 11 version, from Microsoft directly? And what version of 11 (Home, Pro, etc) And what region?
The OOBE changes based on a lot of factors, but generally speaking, most users will encounter the forced account creation screen.
You can get around it by typing in "[email protected]" or some other bullshit. Or use the "Domain join instead" option, and then just...don't join it to a domain.
Genuine W11 iso, downloaded directly from MS website a few weeks ago, no modification. It was a Pro version if I remember correctly.
I tested it on a 2015 Surface Pro.
I was already connected to the network and did not click "Domain join" (I would have if it had asked for a MS account).
Just an update because I just figured what happened: I booted the iso through Ventoy, and just saw today that by default Ventoy injects register entries to bypass the online account requirement (as well as the hardware checks). Good to know.
It's not mandatory to have an account to run win11. Press shift+f10 during the install to open a command prompt. Enter OOBE\BYPASSNRO into the prompt, system will reboot, disconnect the internet, when it prompts you for internet click "I don't have internet".
Without that command, it will not let you continue without an internet connection. If you do it a lot (I do it roughly once a week) then you can modify the installer directly.