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
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 did, Manjaro Linux on a laptop that started on windows 8. I did have meny teacher get upset I was not using the programs they recommend. I did CIT with a minor in web dev and design. It was not always easy but I feel it was worth it when my Uni used proctorio to do testing remote. Protorio is basically a virus or almost a rootkit. I was able to do my testing in-person because I didn’t own a windows or Mac computer.
If the question is not installing Windows on your own hardware, I’d be willing to say “No problem,” for most circumstances. Not only are campus computers with required software on them, I’m sure you’ve got a testing center available for Windows mandatory exams. Also - I work in a modest community college that has a virtual desktop system available to students at no cost that has Windows and plenty of software titles required by various courses.
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.
deleted by creator
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.
Not everywhere! Our accounting department uses a self written toolset based on APL
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.
Replying to give you an extra boost. If your courses are remote or have online exams, you may need to install spyware onto your computer. I’m re-imaging my wife’s computer this weekend because of it…
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.
I also have basically only my personal experience to go off of (from studying computer science), but I never had to plug hardware into my laptop. Printers were available over the network and the one time we worked with hardware, they had dedicated lab PCs there, which had the necessary software pre-installed.
From what I’ve heard on the internet, that’s quite a common theme. Lots of hardware equipment is ridiculously expensive, so you don’t go buying new equipment when accompanying software doesn’t work on newer operating systems anymore. Instead, you keep a PC around with that old OS and the software, specifically for operating that hardware.
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
If you don’t mind using the computer labs (are those even still a thing? when did I get so old that I wonder if commonplace things when I was in college still exist?) or a vm for assignments where the professors require the use of MS software. Which is likely just the intro computer class they use to make sure the kinesiology majors know how to use office.
Of course, there’s also learning management software which is universally broken, so I wouldn’t be surprised if some of it still required IE6.
It’s been a while since I was in college, but I dual booted my laptop with Windows and Fedora for the first couple years then moved exclusively to Fedora. I even wrote my master’s thesis using Libre Office.
Unless you come across arcane statistics software or bullshit “education” tools that only exist for Windows that you need, which is possible, you should be good to go. Even then, you might be able to use Wine or find alternatives.
So yeah, go for it! Keep the Windows VM if you want a safety net.
I made it through college as a Mac user in the mid 90’s which had a lower market share than Linux does now. If I was a college now I’d probably get a reasonably powerful business notebook and run MacOS, and Windows in a VM so I wasn’t left wanting.
wine should handle most things not in a browser. in a browser you can switch the user agent or run edge/chrome if needed. ultimately its going to vary by school, class, and instructor if one requires something that won’t run in wine. In my experience these almost do not exist because mac is very popular in academia. I mean if you take a photoshop or ms office course or such you may be expecting a bit much.
I did History and Computer science and had no issues whatsoever. Most of my history work was LibreOffice writer saving to PDF or .docx formats. Printing, scanning, and using library wifi was always fine.
Computer Science kind of expected Linux, everything we did there was cross-platform already.
What are you studying? Windows VM should be able to handle any programs linux can’t run.
You can probably get by on library computers
