The average US school isn't a great place for open source programs still, sadly. Whether it be teachers giving out notes in .PPT or requesting that essays be se

The average US school isn't a great place for open source programs still, sadly. Whether it be teachers giving out notes in .PPT or requesting that essays be sent to them in Word's format so they can leave notes and send them back. This happens at the university level too outside the known-for-computer schools like MIT, Stanford, etc. I will say, though, if you're going into a computer-related field in the future, having a Linux box will put you ahead of a lot of your peers--at least it used to. Maybe Ubuntu is too nice now, but years ago by forcing myself to use Linux as my OS exclusively, I learned a lot of skills I still use much later in life. From SSH to manually mounting drives to xorg configurations to SSH forwarding to etc etc. The forcing yourself to use it exclusively is best for learning, but even having a small headless Debian box in the corner of your room is helpful for learning about different things.