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How was your experience using Linux in college?

This is aimed at students/ex-students that used Linux while studying in college.

I’m asking because I’ll be starting college next year and I don’t know how much Windows-dependency to expect (will probably be studying to become a psychologist, so no technical education).

I’m also curious about how well LibreOffice and Microsoft Office mesh, i.e. can you share and edit documents together with MOffice users if you use LibreOffice?

Any other things to keep in mind when solely using Linux for your studies? Was it ever frustrating for you to work on group projects with shared documents? Anything else? Give me your all.

solidgrue ,
@solidgrue@lemmy.world avatar

Heck, I ran Linux on my college computers back in the 90s. It was just a thing you did. Ah, memories…

Anyhoo, it largely depends on the school but for most intents and purposes Windows, Mac and Linux are interoperable. By that I mean they can generally open, manipulate and share all of the common document formats natively, with some minor caveats.

Many schools also have access to Microsoft O365, which makes the MS Office online suite available as well. All you really need to use that is a web browser.

I work in an office environment these days where Windows, Mac and Linux are all well supported and are in broad use. I use Linux (Debian) exclusively, my one coworker is all-windows and a third is all-mac. Our boss uses Windows on the desktop, but also uses a Macbook. We are able to collaborate and exchange data without many problems.

I would say the two main challenges you’re liable to face will be when Word files include forms or other uncommon formatting structures. LibreOffice is generally able to deal with them, but may mangle some fonts & formatting. Its not common but it does happen.

The other main challenge could be required courseware-- specialized software used in a curriculum for teaching-- and proctor software for when you’re taking exams online. Those might require Windows or Mac

If it ever comes up, Windows will run in a Virtual Machine (VM) just fine. VirtualBox by Oracle is generally free for individual use, and is relatively easy to start up. Your laptop will probably come with Windows pre-installed, so you could just nuke it, install Linux, install VirtualBox, and then install Windows as a VM using the license that came with your laptop. You’d need to ask an academic advisor at the school if that’s acceptable for whatever proctor software they use.

I recommend against dual-booting a Windows environment if you can avoid it. Linux & Windows are uneasy roommates, and will occasionally wipe out the other’s boot loader. It’s not terribly difficult to recover, but there is a risk that could (will) happen at the WORST possible moment. However, it might be unavoidable if they use proctor software that requires windows on bare metal. Again, you’d have to ask the school.

Good luck!

clark OP ,
@clark@midwest.social avatar

Thank you for writing this!

Your laptop will probably come with Windows pre-installed, so you could just nuke it, install Linux, install VirtualBox, and then install Windows as a VM using the license that came with your laptop.

Would you suggest I buy a computer with Windows pre-installed, or a DIY-edition computer (like Framework) with no OS pre-installed?

solidgrue ,
@solidgrue@lemmy.world avatar

Oh, shoot. If you’re gonna roll your own then that’s probably the better play because at least then the firmware won’t be all locked down and you can pick known-compatible parts. Get it with no OS and sort it out later if you need to.

It’s easy enough to buy a Windows license key later on if you need it. The school night even make it available you at a student discount. Boot it from a USB drive, even.

DannyBoy ,

I was in for computer science major but took lots of other electives. The only course I needed Windows for was Windows App Programming. The rest I was fine with on Linux.

Llituro ,
@Llituro@hexbear.net avatar

using google’s office tools is going to be pretty generally acceptable for most people. depending on your studies, you might be expected to use windows software at some point. i would recommend dual booting. depending on your computing hardware, buying a relatively cheap 1 TB SSD from any retailer and installing windows on it is usually the best option. should simply be a matter of selecting the correct boot device from your system bios. for psychologists, my supposition would be that any proprietary software used, if any, would be windows exclusive.

clark OP ,
@clark@midwest.social avatar

Honestly I did look into dual booting some time ago, but I don’t think (and this is just a guess) that I’ll be that dependent on Windows for my studies, and it feels a bit icky to have a secondary OS that I’ll barely use (just like me having Play Store on my GOS phone). :')

Azarova ,
@Azarova@hexbear.net avatar

If you’re ever forced to use windows for whatever reason, your college should have computers in a library or something that you could use. As far as office software compatibility goes, the office documents themselves are likely to show up with formatting errors if opened in another office suite, but there’s no such issue if you export to PDF though, so I always did my work in LibreOffice and then turned in a PDF and there were never any issues. For group work, I always found it easier to just use one of the browser-based office suites for file compatibility or for working on the same document together.

souperk ,
@souperk@reddthat.com avatar

It depends on the field you are studying. I was into CS, using Linux was recommended because the machines they used to test our code were also running linux.

Most fields are going to be okay with linux, the only exception being fields that rely on specialized software like architects, engineers, and audio/video editing. Also, some software like MatLab are possible to run on Linux but it’s a pain to set them up.

RmDebArc_5 ,
@RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.works avatar

For the office part: Libreoffice formats differently than MS office so there may be problems, but you could also use Onlyoffice (Foss) or WPS office (free but proprietary) which have supposedly 100% compatibility. You could also use MS office web which is free

soundconjurer ,
@soundconjurer@mstdn.social avatar

@RmDebArc_5 @clark , I know MS Office can open and save ODFs, I am not sure how well it does it. One would pressume that it being an open document format (hence the name) and it being a NATO standard, MS office would have proper compatibility, but I am rather reserved to confidently pressume this.

RmDebArc_5 ,
@RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.works avatar

Last time I tried MS office is worse at opening odfs than Libreoffice is at opening docx created in MS office, but you can save as doc from Libreoffice which also has problems, but way less

Dotdev ,
@Dotdev@programming.dev avatar

In college right now 2yr computer science, anything Microsoft is a pain to work offline. I miss the onedrive sync in windows i just use syncthing for that now .

I use onlyoffice since it has one of the best Microsoft office compatibility though I submit my obsidian export as a pdf for my assignments or records.

If you really need ms office or for group projects and you have an o365 account, just use the web version for it.

Windows2000Srv ,

I’m a bit like you! I’m studying to become a High School science teacher, so I’m not in a technical program. My computer serves mostly as a typing machine. I switched 2 years ago and it wasn’t all smooth, but I’ll share some of the things I encountered and what I did.

First problem I had, cloud sync. I used to be a a big OneDrive user and I wanted to sync everything with my drive as I used to be. There isn’t a very good program for syncing OneDrive. I bought a licence to InSync and it made it work flawlessly. Seriously good software! (nowadays I host my own Nextcloud server, but don’t start with that, it’s a lot of job for not a whole lot).

Second problem was getting used to LibreOffice. Compared to Office, LO isn’t formated around pages, every text you write is considered “one big text” and then it calculates where to put its page breaks and everything. What does it change? Not a whole lot, but technically speaking, it’s not as good as a formatting tool as Word is. Doesn’t really matter if you aren’t a formatting freak like I am, but it took me a some time to get use to it. To get better with it, I recommend you to practice styles on it (text style and page style).

Third problem, collaboration. I didn’t find a very good solution to it. What I do is I ask all my colleagues to write their parts online (Google Docs, MS Office Online,…) then once everything is done and perfectly written, I download it and open it in LO and do the final formatting. So I’m always the one doing the formatting. It’s important than when you give it back to your teachers, give it in a .PDF format. (Btw, unrelated, but look into Zotero, it’s a life saver)

And a general tip and trick I could give you is to keep close a Windows/Mac machine (not with you at all times, but just something you access fairly easily if you plan in advance). There were a few times a professor mandated that we submitted the work in MS office format, and I didn’t want to risk it not being right, so I did it in LO and polished it in Office. That and I was asked to use a very specific, Windows only software, so having it was very useful.

If you have other questions, don’t hesitate to ask!

clark OP ,
@clark@midwest.social avatar

Thank you so much for writing this elaborate comment! Super appreciate it. :)

Plopp ,

When I studied at the uni 5 years ago we only collaborated over Google Docs. I’d strongly recommend online collaboration over sending files back and forth. For most things I ran Linux, and booted into Windows when there was a particular need for it, which wasn’t often. But it all depends on what software you’re expected to run during your studies. If you have room on your drive maybe having a minimal Windows install along side Linux could be a good thing?

Also, I’d recommend a distro that comes out of the box with working BTRFS snapshots. The last thing you want is have the machine you rely on for school shit the bed due to a bad update or something you do, and you have to learn how to repair Linux in the middle of an assignment that’s due tomorrow. With snapshots you can just roll back to before it shat the bed.

BaalInvoker ,

Well, I’m a psychologist and my entire college time I used Linux. Most of the times me and my friends used Google Docs instead of MS Office

In psychologist school you’ll be reading a lot, so you’ll need pdf reader, but that is easy in Linux. Maybe, but this is a big maybe, you’ll learn about statistics using a software, but we have Jamovi and JASP for that. If you’re into R or Python, that’s easier in Linux then Windows

If you really need to share documents with your friends using MS Office, LibreOffice may do the job for the content, but have in mind that if you’re in charge of formatting the document, noone else could do it. Otherwise, if other person is in charge, you’ll be better not try to format. Or just use Google Docs / Office 365 (online)

In my own experience, I had no issue using only Linux in my school time

Also, in my daily work as a psychologist, I have no issue with that as well

mrvictory1 ,

MS Office works oob on Crossover and could work on Wine with a bit of tinkering. Research if your college uses examination software. If they do you are either forced to either using Windows / Mac or gambling your academic carrier via running the software on Wine.

Karmmah ,
@Karmmah@lemmy.world avatar

Studying mechanical engineering at a university in Europe at the moment and using Linux exclusively on my main laptop for a few years now. Mostly it’s totally fine since I almost always work with PDF documents while studying and when working in groups we always use something cloud based (Office365) to enable simulataneous editing anyway so no problem there.

However recently we had had to use a program to get bonus points that only runs on Windows and not even inside a virtual machine. Also CAD software is essentially Windows only (I got by using Fusion360 online but it’s much slower than the native app).

So I guess you should be fine, especially since some university/college staff are also Linux enthusiasts but it will probably vary wildly based on where you’re studying.

gjoel ,

My university mainly ran Solaris, pretty much everything also ran on Linux. In the rare case where Windows was required a remote desktop was available.

My university probably isn’t your university though, so answers may not be worth much…

belha ,
@belha@bolha.us avatar

@clark Uni sold their soul to Microsoft, not one Linux machine in sight.
However, I've been using it since last year just fine, as it was intro to programming class.
Though, I will have one electronics class down the line which uses a proprietary, Windows-only, not-gonna-give-you-a-license software, and it really sucks.
Hoping that next time it gets better...

clark OP ,
@clark@midwest.social avatar

I think many technical educations are dependent on Windows to some extent, but I’m not sure how it is with humaniora / social studies-focused education programs.

belha ,
@belha@bolha.us avatar

@clark If it can be achieved on a browser, Linux can definitely be used.

Jumuta ,

wdym by college? the same word means a lot of different things in different places

clark OP ,
@clark@midwest.social avatar

College / university, the thing right after highschool.

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