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.
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.
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.
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.
Try it and see. It depends on your professors and what software they want to use for class. I was able to get through college just fine on Linux, but a couple classes were made easier with windows, so I ran a VM for those classes.
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.
Depends on what you go for. I got my BS and MS entirely with *nix. There are some niche programs for specific majors which did not have alternatives and/or ways to run on *nix, so don’t be disappointed if you can’t find a solution.
There are workarounds to almost every issue you may have. You can run Windows in a VM for software that requires it, or dual boot. M$ Office can be ran in a browser now. There is no reason to buy a license, just DL windows10 direct from M$ and never register, all they do is lock you out of some display options and add a watermark to your desktop.
Last I checked, Pearson doesn’t allow Linux for remote tests, nor will they let you use a VM.
I know there were ways to skirt their VM detection, but is that worth the risk for 10s of thousands of dollars in your education?
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 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
Honestly, great teachers would have given you extra credit for that work (and possibly used it for future semesters, but let’s not get carried away here).
Thanks. I’ve successfully “upstreamed” some of my patches to some courses, but sadly still most of the education is Visual Studio-based. It’s good to see more people in the new years contacting me after asking teachers about Linux and being given my name for help, but of course I want this to be a base part of the curriculum!
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 did
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.
What are you studying? Windows VM should be able to handle any programs linux can’t run.
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, 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.
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.
