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.
Linux was just being invented when I was in college… But if your profs want certain files traded as MS documents Windows will make your life easier. While docx is opened/saved by LibreOffice etc, there are formatting things that can trip you up like default margins, missing fonts (on either end of use) this means what you send somebody may not open and look as intended (even if the issue is actually on the MS user end). It makes things frustrating unless they only want pdf. Also powerpoints get wonky too.
Turning in a docx is very bad practice. It is best to convert to PDF for both security and compatibility. Docx are never going to render properly in the browser.
Many of the online dropboxes for assignments render docx (and pdf files) and many instructors will want the docx for the metadata display (ie author, time taken to complete assignment, etc).
The metadata is very easy to spoof and it pretty much arbitrary. Docx isn’t a standard format in practice if you are using Word. It is sort of fine with other programs but PDF is best.
Docx is the literal default format for Microsoft Word for almost 20 years now. PDF can be whatever, but if it is not what you were instructed to turn in, thats a failure no matter how close to your original intent it renders.
I was doing computer science and we were asked or recommended to use the following pieces of software:
- Citrix Workspace App, which has a native Linux version.
- Docker, which has a native Linux version.
- Google Chrome, which has a native Linux version, but I chose to use Firefox anyway.
- Laragon, which doesn’t have a Linux version, so I just used XAMPP instead.
- Microsoft Excel, which doesn’t have a Linux version. The school offered an Office 365 license, so I could’ve used the web version, but I chose to use LibreOffice Calc instead.
- MySQL Workbench, which has a native Linux version.
- Open ModelSphere, which has a native Linux version.
- Packet Tracer, which has a native Linux version.
- Slack, which has a native Linux version.
- VirtualBox, which has a native Linux version.
Didn’t really have any problems using Linux. Might be different if you need other software, tho.
I login to the student outlook email on the web and use OnlyOffice with Microsoft fonts installed. Presentations and Documents work as needed. I got a fellow student to switch to Linux and he’s had no issues either.
Linux didn’t exist when I was in college but I did work on it’s predecessor Minix in Op Systems class in '89
Studied languages at a university in Sweden, using only libre programs, except for one group assignment where we used Google docs. Nothing terribly interesting (computer-wise). Everything worked. Professors wanted .docx files, which LibreOffice happily exported. If I was so inclined, nothing would’ve stopped me from using something like OpenBSD, or hell, even Haiku would probably work.
In comp sci our labs ran fedora and I didn’t even know what Linux was I just laughed at the computer saying fedora. I thought I was on Mac tbh.
What will you be studying?
When I did CompSci (before dropping out anyway), Linux was actually the recommended setup.
When I switched to Communications, I pushed on with Linux for a long while – MSOffice wasn’t really a thing? Professors and colleagues alike all used GSuite, which runs in browser and is therefore OS-agnostic. Nobody cared what I was using, we all just wrote stuff in Google Docs. (that said, if everyone around IS using MSOffice, then in my experience, stuff translates between Word and LibreOffice pretty well? There’s a little bit of derping around with PowerPoint ig, but word documents were seamless afaic. ALSO it should be noted that if you have to use M$ stuff, Office365 has a completely functional WebApp :P)
I did a lot of graphical work on GIMP and Inkscape.
Buuuuuuut eventually we got to like. Video and compositing related stuff. And much as I’d like to, nothing on Linux can even come close to what Premiere and After Effects can do. A lot of my professors had Macs, but even if I wanted a Mac, I couldn’t afford one. (neither could 95% of my colleagues) So I had to set up Windows. Though it should be noted that since I live in Brazil, my professors encouraged & helped us with pirating the Adobe suite lmao.
I actually kept using GIMP/Inkscape on Windows for graphics stuff, simply because I didn’t want to relearn all the keyboard shortcuts for Photoshop/Illustrator.
Anyway now that I’ve graduated and mostly do writing (worked at a news site, now trying for a job as copywriter at an ad agency), I still keep my Windows install around just in casetm but have not logged into it in like a year.
It should also be noted that, at least here in Brazil, Canva has consumed like 80% of the market for graphical work. They never ask for Photoshop experience anymore, they ask for Canva. It’s weird to me because they have totally different vibes, with Canva having all those presets and shit, but it is what it is. :P
It was great with my CS program. The only issues I had were due to me using some tiling WM so it was harder to make HDMI work for presentations, and then when I switched from Arch to NixOS it was too much of hassle… so should have been way smoother just staying on Arch
College the art dept ran Macintosh OS X while computer science ran Solaris & Windows (outside of C# this didn’t matter). I had a OS X/Windows dual boot laptop at the time as well as a Windows/Linux (Crunchbang) desktop which let me accomplish everything. Adobe products were pretty easy to pirate at the time, & I was intially annoyed WINE didn’t really work with them, but I worked slowly towards getting skills in the FOSS tools & when Adobe moved to a cloud subscription model I said “fuck ’em”. The tools are certanily good enough if not better if you learn them. The CS stuff was much easier with Linux to get compilers & whatnot. OpenOffice was fine for everything else. Professors were never asshats & cared that you completed the assignment rather than what specific tool for file format you were using so long as there was something they could easily view (such as PDF). If I really needed some dumb app, I could just use the computer lab. I carried around a stateful distro on a USB as well so I could get around the opposite issue of not having my Linux tools at say the library that was all Microsoft.
Outside of classwork, Pidgin+libpurple & a browser covered my use cases.
I would use OnlyOffice instead of LibreOffice since it has better overall compatibility with MS Office and overall better UX.
I switched to Linux while going back to school in 2014.
My calculus class had one of those “buy the $80 textbook to get the code for the online assignments” things which didn’t want to work in Linux. I think the URL had something to do with Wolfram. Figures. Side question: Do they still give out copies of Mathematica to Raspberry Pi owners?
Turns out English professors can’t tell the difference between Times New Roman and Liberation Sans.
Writing papers in LibreOffice Writer isn’t a problem, it works fine for that. My professors tended to want them printed out and turned in on paper, so they had no clue what software made it. Printing to PDF works perfectly well too; if they specifically want a .docx file you’ll probably survive. I would probably recommend OnlyOffice over LibreOffice for MS Office compatibility, but an MLA formatted school essay should survive that conversion.
The least plausible thing was working with other students on PowerPoint presentations. LibreOffice Impress works well enough, you can put words and pictures on slides, but its compatibility with PowerPoint just ain’t there. “Let’s each make five slides.” maybe if you work with a blank template first, collect them all together, then apply a style.
I used UNIX on a greenscreen terminal at university before Windows was even released. There were no compatibility problems because nobody used computers outside of CS departments. And now get off my lawn, damn kids!
It went great. I mostly had to submit files in PDF, which allowed any office software to work perfectly.
That is until covid came around and I had to do proctored online exams. The proctoring software doesn’t support linux.
Ex CS student. I’m on 100 % Linux, even back then.
Huge advantage in the Linux/Unix, networking labs.The main issue were Matlab (Octave is kinda ok, but must be tested before you submit your project),
FPGA simulator - Altera (no alternatives, but I can be run on a Windows VM),
3ds Max - must be run on bare-metal Windows (maybe GPU passthrough to a VM will work),
some old weird software,
Cgetch()on Linux.No problems with MS Office, I can run whatever I want, just exported it to the PDF.
No heavy formatting in drafts helps with a group project.Software engineering student here. Well we had a course about Microsoft excel but i used Libreoffice and almost got a full mark. There were no problem with lessons like Advanced programming (C#) and Data structure (C and C++) and few others with languages like python and php. There has been few courses that requires softwares that are not available on linux(Cisco packet tracer and Proteus) but wine solved the problem perfectly. Back in high school i even managed to run Visual Studio but it was hard tbh. I don’t know about what they teach on the other countries colleges but i think you should mostly be fine with linux and wine.
