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.

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.

I went to collage back in the early to mid '10s completed my first year on ubuntu before switching to a 50/50 edubuntu/WIndows drive. Some stuff just required exact windows tools and my department head wouldn’t allow the gnu alternatives as the course work had instructions for windows 7 programs and was already drawing up win 8 plans for next semester too. But writing reports and learning basics was easy enough with the educational ububtu spin.

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.

I bet you could get through college entirely on your phone if you really wanted to, but it’d suck.

I got through University running Debian testing. It was mostly fine, some Linux based subjects were way easier without dealing with a VM (they recommended against WSL for some reason).

However there were a couple units that absolutely required you to use Visual Studio (non-code), I occasionally used a VM, the Uni IT also provided me with a remote VM (there’s a form to fill and and it’s all automated). But I mostly used Rider, which for one unit it confused their CI and I got marked down for (otherwise got top marks so it’s fine).

For office, it didn’t matter. Group projects mostly used Google Docs, occasionally Microsoft Office where the online version worked fine. All my units wanted PDFs at the end anyway, so it does not matter that you used LibreOffice or whatever. Some units provided you with DOCX templates, I had no issues opening them with LibreOffice.

Edit: People are mentioning online exams, my Uni did ‘online quizzes’ which worked fine, and some had to be done in class on their PCs anyway. Final exams where always done on paper.

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.

Depends on your course

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.

Software engineering in Canada in the 2000s. Most of the labs in my university ran Linux, at least in the engineering, math, and science areas of campus.

Personally I ran, depending on the year, LFS (Linux from Scratch), Slackware, or Gentoo (which still lives on that laptop today but also it hasn’t been booted or connected to a network in like 10 years).

I think there was only one lab with Windows. We also had a lab of Solaris machines but I bet those are gone now.

No idea what Law, Nursing, and other faculties in the other side of campus used.

Unviable for economics and finance in my experience. Excel is absolutely mandatory for these

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.

i did

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.

You can probably get by on library computers