> This is like saying you want to use Windows without a user account
If only I was able to do what you describe, I would use Windows. But sadly, Microsoft wants to invade users' lives like a malignant cancer, so Linux it is.
Linux requires a user account too. There is no anonymous mode. You will always be running something as a user who has a user id. getuid and geteuid are always successful and correspond to a valid user. In theory there could be a way to run things without a user, but Linux was designed to not allow that.
I thought you could skip creating a MS account if you ran the setup entirely offline. Does that trick not work anymore? To be honest, even if it did work you can't trust MS to stay out of your business. Windows is constantly collecting data on the what you do on your system including the name of the file you open and what software you have installed. Jumping through hoops to try and work around a user hostile OS is a losing battle. You'll always be one forced update away from defeat. Linux is the way to go. I'm forced to use windows at work, but at home the last windows OS I had was 7 professional and it looks like it'll be the last I ever use.
> I thought you could skip creating a MS account if you ran the setup entirely offline. Does that trick not work anymore?
It still works. There are several alternative workarounds as well. I have a laptop that normally runs Debian that I can dual-boot to Windows for BIOS updates or to use Acer’s app to limit battery charge to 80%. I use a local Windows account without a password, as I don’t keep any data on the Windows partition.
I don't know if you can opt out that specifically or not. There are third party tools that claim to disable a lot more than MS will normally allow, but I don't put much faith in them (if for no other reason than the fact that MS can undo anything with an update)
MS took these pages down, but there were two posts that I think gave users the most in depth look at at the kinds of data they've been collecting:
This only gives examples of some of the types of things they collect though. For example, it says that the Photo App (default image viewer) will tell MS if the file was on your hard drive or a network share or a cloud server or an SD card, and it will send them the metadata (resolution, file size, encoding, etc) and tell them if you looked at the photo or video in fullscreen mode, as well as how long you spent looking at each file, but you shouldn't assume that's all the information they take. That's why the start of each section has the words "such as"
Now that they're fully committed to using their OS as an ad delivery platform they likely collect everything that they think will help them target those ads to you better.