Its kind of funny that either this change effects a really small group of people, and its just MS being weirdly vindictive about nerds not wanting to use a Microsoft account OR they have such a problem with people avoiding MS account sign on that they feel the need to do it.
As someone who manages 1000s of windows devices.... Do the damn upgrades. That is why your device has issues. You can have all the moral complaints you want, I get it, but you're just making things more difficult for yourself. Either follow their patching cadence or switch to Linux. You're putting yourself into a purgatory zone that is only making things more janky.
I mentioned feature upgrades specifically. Why is it so imperative to apply them immediately, especially since the older major releases receive updates for quite a while after it stops being the most recent version? I'm talking about updates like 25H2, 24H2 etc that supply new features, not the "cumulative" stability/security updates that broadly don't change anything in terms of UX. I don't remember these major releases ever fixing any problems I had, besides adding something I wanted to have that wasn't in an older release.
They do though. Especially the 24H2 stuff. They include all of the cumulative, feature, and security updates.
I'm tired of micromanaging all this, it's getting way too cumbersome even for someone who's grown up with Windows. I've stopped applying all feature updates to my Windows install because I know their current goal is to make your life worse (and more profitable) every single time. Once that install becomes too outdated, I'll move to Linux full-time - I've enjoyed it as a dual-boot experience, but games are still holding me back. Having to constantly tinker with my Linux install was another thing, but at this point Microsoft is making their software so annoying to use that it will soon outpace all the Linux hitches I've had.