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, 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.

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.

wine should handle most things not in a browser. in a browser you can switch the user agent or run edge/chrome if needed. ultimately its going to vary by school, class, and instructor if one requires something that won’t run in wine. In my experience these almost do not exist because mac is very popular in academia. I mean if you take a photoshop or ms office course or such you may be expecting a bit much.

i did

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

There are two potential show-stoppers.

1. Field-specific apps that only run on windows. If you really need Adobe Creative Cloud or SolidWorks or something like that you might be out of luck. This is mostly true for apps that require GPU acceleration, which is difficult to rig up in a VM. You wouldn’t want to do that if it was a big part of your workload.

2. Mandatory spyware and rootkit DRM to prevent cheating with remote tests. Hopefully if they do such a thing they provide loaner hardware too. I’ve seen a lot of bullshit in my time but my experience is outdated, so I don’t know what’s common nowadays.

I also have basically only my personal experience to go off of (from studying computer science), but I never had to plug hardware into my laptop. Printers were available over the network and the one time we worked with hardware, they had dedicated lab PCs there, which had the necessary software pre-installed.

From what I’ve heard on the internet, that’s quite a common theme. Lots of hardware equipment is ridiculously expensive, so you don’t go buying new equipment when accompanying software doesn’t work on newer operating systems anymore. Instead, you keep a PC around with that old OS and the software, specifically for operating that hardware.

It’s been a while since I was in college, but I dual booted my laptop with Windows and Fedora for the first couple years then moved exclusively to Fedora. I even wrote my master’s thesis using Libre Office.

Unless you come across arcane statistics software or bullshit “education” tools that only exist for Windows that you need, which is possible, you should be good to go. Even then, you might be able to use Wine or find alternatives.

So yeah, go for it! Keep the Windows VM if you want a safety net.

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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.

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 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

I did, Manjaro Linux on a laptop that started on windows 8. I did have meny teacher get upset I was not using the programs they recommend. I did CIT with a minor in web dev and design. It was not always easy but I feel it was worth it when my Uni used proctorio to do testing remote. Protorio is basically a virus or almost a rootkit. I was able to do my testing in-person because I didn’t own a windows or Mac computer.

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