In a nutshell, yes. Stock Windows has become even more useless over the years, and installation has obviously become a pain in the ass. I don't envy our IT department.

AFAIK the BypassNRO method doesn't work anymore, instead:

“When it asks for one's Microsoft account, press Shift + F10, and type start ms-cxh:localonly. This prompts the window to create a local account instead. 🖕” ―Bypass Windows 11 Microsoft account prompt

There's some loopholes to jump through depending on hardware but that's also because of windows.

Windows just dug it's own grave over the years, and still fails to die....

Many Linii (and even BSDeez and various Archaeums) are more "download to a USB stick and use" now, you don't even need to install them!

Just today and yesterday, one of my friends asked me to upgrade their windows server for their small business.

Installing a fucking windows took me 6 hours. This whole shit would be done in 40min I if I could install and setup Debian on their server.

Do it all again when msft undoes your work on the next update

Sometimes when seeing Linux Memes like this, I think whether this one user with their 1-man-linux-hating-community simply blocked all these communities or reads them as some sort of rage-fuel.

Ran into this shit yesterday trying to set up a laptop for someone where I had no internet access.

Imagine having everything ready to go on a USB drive and you can’t get past the second screen unless you find WiFi.

At least this command still works, but damn.

I'll bite, I don't mind making an ass out of myself.

I've done installs of linux where the fact the internet connection was shit slowed it down. why is the fucking ·iso 4gb if it still needs shit from the internet?

Who says you have to install Linux? Just run it directly on a USB drive to be extra flexible!

Back in the early 2000's I started playing with Linux on old machines and have used Linux on an off since. Now I only have one Windows laptop that I need for a few very specific things and it's Linux for any backend stuff. I've got pi's, nucs and a NAS, all Linux now.

I am so grateful for all the hard work people have put in over the last two decades making sure we can step away from Windows without having to go to the Apple or Chrome walled gardens. I've made a career working in the Microsoft stack and I'm so done with them.

Now if I could just figure out how to turn my windows laptop into a VM on my ProxMox machine.