I did computer science in uni and it was never an issue. The only time I remember needing specific windows software was a RISC processor simulator we used in my low level programming class, and for that there was a hefty license on the software anyway, so basically everyone used the lab computers.

For the office part: Libreoffice formats differently than MS office so there may be problems, but you could also use Onlyoffice (Foss) or WPS office (free but proprietary) which have supposedly 100% compatibility. You could also use MS office web which is free

Heck, I ran Linux on my college computers back in the 90s. It was just a thing you did. Ah, memories...

Anyhoo, it largely depends on the school but for most intents and purposes Windows, Mac and Linux are interoperable. By that I mean they can generally open, manipulate and share all of the common document formats natively, with some minor caveats.

Many schools also have access to Microsoft O365, which makes the MS Office online suite available as well. All you really need to use that is a web browser.

I work in an office environment these days where Windows, Mac and Linux are all well supported and are in broad use. I use Linux (Debian) exclusively, my one coworker is all-windows and a third is all-mac. Our boss uses Windows on the desktop, but also uses a Macbook. We are able to collaborate and exchange data without many problems.

I would say the two main challenges you're liable to face will be when Word files include forms or other uncommon formatting structures. LibreOffice is generally able to deal with them, but may mangle some fonts & formatting. Its not common but it does happen.

The other main challenge could be required courseware-- specialized software used in a curriculum for teaching-- and proctor software for when you're taking exams online. Those might require Windows or Mac

If it ever comes up, Windows will run in a Virtual Machine (VM) just fine. VirtualBox by Oracle is generally free for individual use, and is relatively easy to start up. Your laptop will probably come with Windows pre-installed, so you could just nuke it, install Linux, install VirtualBox, and then install Windows as a VM using the license that came with your laptop. You'd need to ask an academic advisor at the school if that's acceptable for whatever proctor software they use.

I recommend against dual-booting a Windows environment if you can avoid it. Linux & Windows are uneasy roommates, and will occasionally wipe out the other's boot loader. It's not terribly difficult to recover, but there is a risk that could (will) happen at the WORST possible moment. However, it might be unavoidable if they use proctor software that requires windows on bare metal. Again, you'd have to ask the school.

Good luck!

I actually switched to Ubuntu full-time way back in 2006 when I went back to school (anthro major), specifically to help me focus when using my computer and not get distracted by playing video games. Of course, nowadays with wine and proton on steam, that might not be as effective. But it worked well for me, never experienced any issues with word docs opening in libre office (or rather open office back then) or vice versa. There was once or twice where I had to use a computer in the lab in the library to run some niche program or another for an assignment, but not a big deal.

Comp sci undergrad from a mid tier university graduated in 2012, didn't need Windows at all. I mostly used an Ubuntu desktop, pocket sized mini laptop with bsd, and a red hat vdi the school provided during a research assistantship.

The school had labs in the library and comp sci building if you needed windows for something but it never came up. Group projects shared files on school provided web based tools or dropbox and used the same for class forums, sharing docs and assignments, etc. Some web stuff was broken for Firefox and had to use chrome, but never hit anything requiring IE (pre Edge).

Even if you're not in a technical field you may want to explore some of the common tools they use like git for version control (like save/restore points in a video game), LaTeX/TeX for better typesetting than office, and off-site backups.

I had a teacher who was really passionate about Ubuntu and was distributing Ubuntu 5/6 live CDs. I ended up installing it on my laptop. It was a pretty miserable experience. Everything was ugly as hell, configuring the sound card was a pain, Wi-Fi drivers had constant problems, upgrades to the new x.04/x.10 version borked the system 100℅ of the time. Pretty miserable but got the job done.

Nowadays the experience is much, much smoother. Just ensure you don't need exclusive software.

I was super lucky apparently because my degree's curriculum required C# and ASP.NET, on top of our CTO having a big bug up his ass and hitting the switch that disallowed Linux computers to connect to the wifi. Even connecting Macbooks was a huge headache I guess. Dude didn't fucking care and would just jerk himself off about how hardened the school's network was.

My laptop was really shitty too but I ended up running Windows 7 in a VM just to get by. But had to do a lot of bullshit between OSes and in the end, it would have just been way better if I had just bit the bullet and used Windows for the time I was there.

I'm probably an outlier and today it's probably better but if your school gets kickbacks from M$ and you are going for programming just expect it I guess.

LIbreOffice's .docx formatting sucks when going between it and M$ Word too but someone else already mentioned that.

I’ve loved Linux for college. Studying CS and Math, graduating soon. Just know your requirements software wise and be prepared to find workarounds or dual boot if necessary. I never had to dual boot but I was able to use Google docs or the browser version of office for anything requiring office formatting or collaborative work. I also couldn’t download some testing software on Linux (respondus lockdown browser 🤢) and used a school desktop in the library to run that when necessary. I love my workflow though outside of those niggles and couldn’t ask for a better research and development OS

Most of the time it was not an issue. Occasionally a teacher gave us a office document that loaded a bit funky, but it never blocked me from doing my assignments.

Deliverables were PDFs, so it really doesn't matter what you use.

I do remember having to learn some ghostscript command so that I could edit PDFs and stitch together a bunch of PDFs into one file. It was annoyingly difficult to edit PDFs back then, but I figured it out.

It was my college experience. Didn't use anything else. No issues at all

Big waste of time. Spent too much time troubleshooting to get it working on my laptop before I just said "fuck it" and installed Windows. There was way too much software compatibility issues and I was spending more time troubleshooting than I was studying. I'm sure Linux can work for some students but for me and the field I majored in, Linux is no bueno.

I studied CompSci, so a very technical field, and with one exception (Power BI), everything I used ran on Linux just as well. For my Thesis, I used TeXStudio. For normal writing or presentations, I just used LibreOffice. For calculations, I used Python. For collaborative document editing, we used Google Docs.

Word of caution: LibreOffice supports the various formats of MS Office, but I've had issues the other way around, where a presentation I created in LO wouldn't work in MSO. If you need to collab on files together, I'd recommend Google Docs. If it's just you, I recommend sending PDF versions along with (or instead of) the original file, just to be sure.

My experience was that the school provided free Windows keys for a personal computer if you needed one (they didn’t provide the computer itself) but the majority of computers I interacted with on campus (mostly in the computer lab) were Linux (some Debian variant iirc). I think the printing computers in the library were windows. I took an art class at one point and they had Macs (it was for using the Apple’s Final Cut Pro).

We never used LibreOffice though. Everyone just uses Google Drive.

So far I've been able to run everything I need to off of it, and libreoffice works very well with office docs in my experience.

I got no pussy

MS Office works oob on Crossover and could work on Wine with a bit of tinkering. Research if your college uses examination software. If they do you are either forced to either using Windows / Mac or gambling your academic carrier via running the software on Wine.

I've used GNU/OpenBSD all the way through community college (US) with minor issues. Biggest issue is having to use platforms like zoom for some online courses, which requires an RTC capable browser (aka firefox or chromium, neither of which I am a big fan of) for the webclient, which the company clearly does not want you using as they won't actually give a prompt to use the webclient until you click their link to fail opening their native spyware client (so who knows when the webclient will just disappear altogether). Another issue was professors using proprietary microsoft formats which require installing libreoffice, which isn't tooling I particularly enjoy using, but at least the option is there. I haven't had to use a malware "lockdown" browser or anything like that thankfully (though if I had to, I'd just use computers on-campus to do the work). Most classes allow submissions in PDF, and if the syllabus only allows docx submissions, the professor will allow me to submit PDF after contacting them.