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.

  • Llituro [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    5 months ago

    using google's office tools is going to be pretty generally acceptable for most people. depending on your studies, you might be expected to use windows software at some point. i would recommend dual booting. depending on your computing hardware, buying a relatively cheap 1 TB SSD from any retailer and installing windows on it is usually the best option. should simply be a matter of selecting the correct boot device from your system bios. for psychologists, my supposition would be that any proprietary software used, if any, would be windows exclusive.

    • Wild Bill@midwest.social
      ·
      5 months ago

      Honestly I did look into dual booting some time ago, but I don't think (and this is just a guess) that I'll be that dependent on Windows for my studies, and it feels a bit icky to have a secondary OS that I'll barely use (just like me having Play Store on my GOS phone). :')

      • Azarova [they/them]
        ·
        5 months ago

        If you're ever forced to use windows for whatever reason, your college should have computers in a library or something that you could use. As far as office software compatibility goes, the office documents themselves are likely to show up with formatting errors if opened in another office suite, but there's no such issue if you export to PDF though, so I always did my work in LibreOffice and then turned in a PDF and there were never any issues. For group work, I always found it easier to just use one of the browser-based office suites for file compatibility or for working on the same document together.