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’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.

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 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 your course

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.

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.

You can probably get by on library computers

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.

However I had to borrow one if the schools Windows computer for final exams because the anticheat spyware didn’t run on Linux.

i did

You pretty much need networkmanager for eduroam. If you are a wpa_supplicant enthusiast you need to swallow your pride. Otherwise no issues with using linux for higher education.

Learning Latex for your dissertation will make referencing easier, as an aside.

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.