I feel that I have a vague idea about what that was like but I wish it was possible to have pictures or videos from that time so people can have a clear idea.
That sounds very unpleasant, but I think due to rigor mortis and the gas that a corpse produces some ghosts may feel bloated or stiff if they are still connected to their old bodies. It probably feels like constipation all over their body.
As a physics major, daily driving Linux worked out pretty smoothly. The thing that saved me from trouble the most was making a weekly full system backup (I used Clonezilla and my file server). If anything was truly incompatible, I took care of it on the school’s computers.
In my second semester, I began dual-booting on my X201 Tablet and desktop, eventually booting into Windows infrequently enough that I made my X201T Linux-only by the end of my second year.
Around that point, I began using LUKS full-disk encryption on my machines and USB drives. I highly recommend if you don’t already, even if just for peace of mind. I have strong ideas about the way things ought to look and work, so being able to customize Linux to my heart’s content (with Chicago95 ofc) made doing work on my computer a bit more enjoyable.
Documents
MS Office: Libreoffice worked 95% of the time. For the other 5%, I used the school computers or my Windows VM.
Google Docs and GMail: accessed through Chromium, which I only used to access Google and sites linked to my school’s SSO system.
We did a lot of writing in Latex, though it might be a physics thing
A lot of other small stuff I’m starting to forget, but if I don’t mention it, I probably did it through the browser.
Lab
MATLAB: GNU Octave sufficed 75% of the time, often needing just slight changes to the code. Otherwise I used the lab computers or my desktop with actual MATLAB.
Proprietary dana analysis software: One had a .deb package for oldoldoldstable so I set up a VM just for that. Otherwise, lab computers it was.
Lab computers running old and new versions of Windows were available to us, so if there was anything computationally intensive or requiring proprietary software, I would just take care of it in the lab.
Social
Slack, Discord, Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp: browser client, which I would check on a schedule
Tools
VPN: NetworkManager, though it was a bit janky. I think it’s a lot better nowadays.
Printing: We had a web print portal to upload docs and pdfs to a printer of our choice.
Graphics
Mostly prepared my posters, etc in a mix of Libreoffice Draw, GIMP, and Inkscape
Adobe: Had to use it on one occasion. Used the library computers where it was installed for everyone to use.
Digital notes: I would use Xournal on my X201 Tablet whenever I forgot to bring my notebook or refill my fountain pen. Managed to impress a few of my iPad-toting classmates when I whipped out the pen and the display around on what they believed to be an ancient clunker.
As for the desktop, I had purchased it with gaming in mind, but it eventually became my SMB file share, media server, and RDP session host so I could make any library desktop like my own. Each thing in its own VM, of course. By the end of it, I was one of about 3 students running a server over the campus LAN. Even in the comp sci department, surprisingly few students used Linux.
Linux also met all of my computing needs while studying abroad in Germany. For five whole months, I had not used Windows once. Though my SSD did give out on me once, a backup saved the day.
A friend once did need to use a rather invasive remote proctoring tool. Highly recommend a separate laptop or at least a fresh SSD for this case.
Mobile privacy, if it’s relevant
I was in the fortunate position where none of my classes or jobs required proprietary mobile apps
Friends used Venmo or whatever else, I paid back in cash
SMS and emails sufficed for regular communication
Overall, it was smooth sailing using Linux throughout my college years and no incompatibilities that couldn’t be solved in the library or a computer lab.
I was always a fan of Mednaffe, a GUI frontend for Mednafen, for all of my NES, SNES, and GBA emulation needs. Of course, that’s all a bit moot now that I have a handheld.
Legend of Mana, although it was broken, I never got bored with encounters. didn’t have to worry about items or mana, only health. if they added a mana system (ironic) and fixed the stunlock, would’ve been more balanced
I was super lucky apparently because my degree’s curriculum required C# and ASP.NET, on top of our CTO having a big bug up his ass and hitting the switch that disallowed Linux computers to connect to the wifi. Even connecting Macbooks was a huge headache I guess. Dude didn’t fucking care and would just jerk himself off about how hardened the school’s network was.
My laptop was really shitty too but I ended up running Windows 7 in a VM just to get by. But had to do a lot of bullshit between OSes and in the end, it would have just been way better if I had just bit the bullet and used Windows for the time I was there.
I’m probably an outlier and today it’s probably better but if your school gets kickbacks from M$ and you are going for programming just expect it I guess.
LIbreOffice’s .docx formatting sucks when going between it and M$ Word too but someone else already mentioned that.
You could try headscale instead, which doesn’t actually pass much traffic between the VPS and clients (client to client is where the actual data transfer happens).
Or just test out regular hosted Tailscale to see if it will fit your needs.
There’s no other system that quite captures the feeling of, “Shit, that was a lot of damage. Do I try to heal them before it rolls to 0 or just spam attack and hope to end combat before they go down?”
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