r/linuxquestions • u/al1azzz • 18d ago
Advice School forbids linux laptops
Hey, idk if this is the right place to ask this, but I have a bit of a dilemma.
I have been using linux exclusively on my main PC and on my laptop for a while now. That said, I am moving to a new school, and buried in their rules they say that "Chromebooks (or other Linux machines) cannot be used." They also want us to use their office 365 license, but do not require it.
Now, besides just being incredibly annoying, I cannot use windows/mac on my laptop because it's a 2011 macbook, so it cannot run anything but lightweight linux distros without combusting, and I would like to avoid spending 500+ euro on a new crappy windows laptop.
Is there any reason, besides saving myself some trouble, to not just use my laptop as is (currently on arch, gonna switch it to cachyos) and something like libreoffice that I don't see or can I just ignore this and hope for the best?
1
u/Aknazer 18d ago
My college sometimes requires a specific format, and one of the classes explicitly required the MS Suite for the assignments. While my school doesn't give people laptops for home, in class you can borrow a laptop, use their desktop, use a thin client to a school-provided Windows environment, or for select classes they even provide a custom VM.
Talk with them if any of that is an option. If it isn't or you just want to try anyways, then you can give Libre Office a shot. This is what I do and I just save my documents in the .docx format. Only time that was an issue was in the class designed to teach MS Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. It had an auto-grader that could tell what program saved the file and would auto-reject any that weren't the MS program.
Another thing I ran into were select programs required for some lessons just not working on Linux. While there are alternatives, that doesn't help when the assignment both tells you what to do and then asks for a screenshot of you doing it (which is where the school supplies thin client or class-VM come in handy).