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 rocked Linux when doing my CS degree. It was great, and I felt I had a much better learning outcome than my peers. It will depend on requirements from your uni. I had some trouble with my school’s printers (but so did those running Windows sometimes), but we had a web interface we could use. And in one class the lecturer decided that we needed to use Visual Studio. We could use Rider instead but got no support from the lecturer, so I had to figure out some stuff myself. But it was a good learning process.
A lot of stuff was much easier for me to do than my peers. Especially terminal stuff, Docker and other stuff where they often used WSL or VMs. As where I had native tools
Currently studying Computer Engineering. I did manage to get most stuff working without needing Windows.
It came usually at the cost of extra work, but I’d say it was worth it. So far I even got to writing makefiles for C++ projects targetting some Atmel chip (Microchip Studio is Windows only). And in some cases I even found better tools than what they privided us with.
Unless you need some very very specific program or run into some wierd constrains you will be fine.
Depends on your major, I guess.
My university’s CS program basically required GNU+Linux (as I’ve recently took to calling it). It was great actually.
Hopefully you don’t have to use Photoshop, anon.
i’d just like to interject for a moment
I did, and that was a while ago. However, I would say that it would depend on what your degree is on. I had to do a lot of writing so it was fine for 99.99% of the time.
At one point all my assignments were handed in PDF format. A practice that I still do today as a professional. If you must hand in via Word, you may have some issues unless you run MS-Office somewhere. As there is always the risk of minor formatting issues.
For those rare times, maybe use their library or comp. Lab.
I mean you can always use the web version of office for 'free" with a Microsoft account. There’s a 100% chance your paper gets used to train AI but still
I have gotten almost 1.5 degrees running linux my only issue is Lockdown browser. Other than that 0 issues
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.
Lol same. Eventually (maybe the fifth exam or so) they just stopped caring about me though, and let me use my own laptop with openSUSE. Zero security, I was even hooked up to their WIFI and could easily have cheated… I didn’t though; the only exams where it would have been tempting were hand-written anyway.
It sucks that education institutions care so little for people not using giant corpo microshit though.
It sucks that education institutions care so little for people not using giant corpo microshit though.
Its so bad too.
Our school used ciscovpn for access to the university cluster and web services.
I figured out how to configure openconnect to work properly. And even wrote and hosted documentation for other Linux users to do the same.
However the school had no interest in incorporating my documentation into their VPN help site.
For me things actually became easier when I got myself a native Linux install instead of Windows. But I guess it depends on your college.
i’ve been doing cs for a year now with a coreboot’d t440p. if anything, it’s gotten me some greetz from my profs, lmao
i’ve made do with libreoffice just fine, i submit most of my labs in odt without issue
keep a VM for labs in case they require windows, on machine or a home server. pick your poison
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
What are you studying? Windows VM should be able to handle any programs linux can’t run.
I did Computer Engineering with Linux and Windows on a VM, it worked fine
I am 80% done with my bachelors of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering in India. Never had a issue.
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!?
Not everywhere! Our accounting department uses a self written toolset based on APL
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.
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 👍
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.
