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How was your experience using Linux in college?
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this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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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.
Maybe that was the case historically but these days I can't imagine a professor wanting that. It would break all the grading process as docx isn't supported properly by a lot of the online tools.
Even if they did I imagine the students would create some issues with Macros. You'd end up with documents that are behaving like malware if you open them in desktop. That wouldn't be a problem with Word online but word online isn't really usable.