We had a USB prepared with drivers in advance, but that's useless when you can't get to a desktop. I admittedly didn't realize you couldn't even install Windows 11 without an active network.

Linux would at least let me install the base system and configure the drivers after. Funny enough that USB mentioned is my ventoy and we did experiment with Linux Mint before we started on Windows. It found the NIC and network on the live ISO with no effort, I honestly thought it would be smooth sailing after that experiment.

I would have just gone with mint personally but wasn't my system, was just helping a friend.