Even with tests, don’t most universities have library computers or a computer lab that’ll suffice instead of using your personal Linux machine?

Just because nobody’s mentioned them yet and they are worth trying out: Solus & Void. Both are independent and rolling distributions.

I got a very early version of Debian from a friend when I was in college. I had a very old computer gifted to me but couldn’t get Windows to install. I ran that badboy with no window manager, just text. I used elinks for my web browser and pine for email. VI was where I wrote my papers. Drivers were a problem, so I had to save papers on a disk to print from a computer at a library.