I rocked Linux when doing my CS degree. It was great, and I felt I had a much better learning outcome than my peers. It will depend on requirements from your uni. I had some trouble with my school’s printers (but so did those running Windows sometimes), but we had a web interface we could use. And in one class the lecturer decided that we needed to use Visual Studio. We could use Rider instead but got no support from the lecturer, so I had to figure out some stuff myself. But it was a good learning process.

A lot of stuff was much easier for me to do than my peers. Especially terminal stuff, Docker and other stuff where they often used WSL or VMs. As where I had native tools

Currently studying Computer Engineering. I did manage to get most stuff working without needing Windows.

It came usually at the cost of extra work, but I’d say it was worth it. So far I even got to writing makefiles for C++ projects targetting some Atmel chip (Microchip Studio is Windows only). And in some cases I even found better tools than what they privided us with.

Unless you need some very very specific program or run into some wierd constrains you will be fine.

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, and that was a while ago. However, I would say that it would depend on what your degree is on. I had to do a lot of writing so it was fine for 99.99% of the time.

At one point all my assignments were handed in PDF format. A practice that I still do today as a professional. If you must hand in via Word, you may have some issues unless you run MS-Office somewhere. As there is always the risk of minor formatting issues.

For those rare times, maybe use their library or comp. Lab.

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 have gotten almost 1.5 degrees running linux my only issue is Lockdown browser. Other than that 0 issues

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!

For me things actually became easier when I got myself a native Linux install instead of Windows. But I guess it depends on your college.

i’ve been doing cs for a year now with a coreboot’d t440p. if anything, it’s gotten me some greetz from my profs, lmao

i’ve made do with libreoffice just fine, i submit most of my labs in odt without issue

keep a VM for labs in case they require windows, on machine or a home server. pick your poison

What are you studying? Windows VM should be able to handle any programs linux can’t run.

I did Computer Engineering with Linux and Windows on a VM, it worked fine

I am 80% done with my bachelors of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering in India. Never had a issue.

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

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.