I’d like to never boot into Windows again. I have VirtualBox installed where I can install Windows 11 if I need to but is there anything that it(Windows on a VM) wouldn’t be able to do like accessing hardware devices? Thanks in advance
I did.
However I had to borrow one if the schools Windows computer for final exams because the anticheat spyware didn’t run on Linux.
What are you studying? Windows VM should be able to handle any programs linux can’t run.
I did a bachelor of videogame programming in Belgium 99% on Linux (minus exams), but it was definitely a huge struggle. All the courses and assignments were Windows-only, and 90%-ish required Visual Studio (non-Code) and Windows-only libraries like DirectX or Win32. I got by writing my own tooling to auto-convert these to CMake projects and convincing each teacher to allow me to hand in CMake projects. I wrote SDL backends for most of the win32 assignments, falling back on clang’s excellent cross-compiling for stuff that requires e.g Windows.h. I wrote a blog post about this: https://blog.allpurposem.at/adventures-cross-compiling-a-windows-game-engine And using e.g DirectX natively on Linux, easier than expected: https://blog.allpurposem.at/directx
I also wrote a small wiki on my general experience + a summary of courses and main problems encountered… Windows was non-negotiable during exams: https://dae-linux.allpurposem.at/ I maintain tools, converted assignments, and information on this for future students who want to attempt something like me, but it’s hard to recommend the Linux challenge if you are totally new to programming!
Hope some of this is helpful!
Admirable dedication to the cause
Depends on your major. I’m a bio/ecology major and a lot of the tools I used were cross platform or web based.
Also the university I went to did have basic Linux instructions for certain things like connecting to printers and connecting to the internet.
i did
I’ve been using it since high school. Never looked back. The only thing that bothers is annoying professors using privative software. But don’t let them define your freedom. Work around “those specific cases” rather than suffering windows just for them.
Yeah you usually can. LibreOffice works fine for most things. Some classes need things like Solid works that only run on Windows, and the remote testing software can be a nightmare. You might get an O365 license as part of your enrollment but doubt you really need it.
Protip; learn how to typeset your papers in something like LyX and integrate Zotero for citation management. The typesetting usually got me a few extra points alone.
Learning proper typesetting is a great skill anyway, so do it! And yea, I can vouch for the extra credit 👍
Depends on your course
It depends on what you’re studying. Some majors like accounting might require you to use Excel, for example. On the other hand, when I was getting my BS+MS in computer engineering, running Linux was actually advantageous
I’m going into a Medical Lab Tech program. I know 1 lab tech but he went to school in the 80’s. So I’m not sure what software they use now.
I don’t know specifically about a medical lab tech program. But I do know about clinical software in general. It is by and large proprietary Widows software. Seems like something you may encounter. But said software could be delivered via Citrix, which does have a Linux client.
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Accountants use Excel!?
If you can’t run your business out of Excel, you aren’t using Excel correctly.
/SI mean I’m sure it’s possible but surely there are better solutions…?
Not for the price of €12/user/month
Salesforce, ServiceNow, and SAP can never match those prices.
I wasn’t referring to those, I was referring to dedicated accounting software.
€12/user is trivial for any business, much less an accounting business that I’m sure it’s lucrative.
Yes, the price is the point. Excel (Office) is that dirt fucking cheap, industry standard, and comes with a bunch of other shit included that can be legitimate value add for a small business.
If you’re at a firm that has legitimate need for specialized accounting software, you’ll have enough money to get those. But even those generally export to Excel format. Without outing myself too much, I’ve had comsiderable exposure to financial tech over the last decade and less than 10 specialized accounting softwares I’ve seen couldn’t export to Excel. All of those still exported to csv, or “software agnostic excel” if we want to bend things a bit.
The power of being industry standard for going on 30 years now cannot be overstated.
I got through University running Debian testing. It was mostly fine, some Linux based subjects were way easier without dealing with a VM (they recommended against WSL for some reason).
However there were a couple units that absolutely required you to use Visual Studio (non-code), I occasionally used a VM, the Uni IT also provided me with a remote VM (there’s a form to fill and and it’s all automated). But I mostly used Rider, which for one unit it confused their CI and I got marked down for (otherwise got top marks so it’s fine).
For office, it didn’t matter. Group projects mostly used Google Docs, occasionally Microsoft Office where the online version worked fine. All my units wanted PDFs at the end anyway, so it does not matter that you used LibreOffice or whatever. Some units provided you with DOCX templates, I had no issues opening them with LibreOffice.
Edit: People are mentioning online exams, my Uni did ‘online quizzes’ which worked fine, and some had to be done in class on their PCs anyway. Final exams where always done on paper.
Depends on the program and the professors. I’m doing computer scuence at CSUN, and I’ve gotten lucky, none of the online exams have required any proctoring software (rootkit monitoring software). They just do them in the browser.
I bet you could get through college entirely on your phone if you really wanted to, but it’d suck.
Yes, except online exams. The online spyware they make you install for those is designed not to work on a VM or anything like that. I had to keep a barebones windows partition around just for that.
For my classes, certain ones required Visual Studios, but for the most part, you can just run that in a VM (or use JetBrains substitutes if you can). However, if you’re doing game design or development, a VM might not preform well unless you have a GPU passthrough setup.
Visual Studio works on Linux, or at least VS Code does
I was studying computer science and at my University in Gothenburg all the lab computers were Linux. We had one course which required Windows because there was one software which never got ported to Linux which we had to use and it was a pain because only one lab room had windows computers and they were constantly booked.
Most probably you’ll be just fine.
What software was that?
It was some custom software for emulating electrical wires and very low level stuff, I don’t remember much more.
