Interestingly, when I booted up a Win10 VM (with internet access) a few weeks ago some Edge window appeared, took over the screen, and wanted to force me to go through their preferences/setup wizard.

By "force" I mean "giving no other options". No "skip", "do it later" (or similar), and no way to quit.

Had to outright kill the task in the windows process manager, as there's zero chance I want anything to do with Edge.

So "don't use the software" is workable for people who know how to kill tasks.

But MS will be pulling that shit on average consumers too.