Yeah you usually can. LibreOffice works fine for most things. Some classes need things like Solid works that only run on Windows, and the remote testing software can be a nightmare. You might get an O365 license as part of your enrollment but doubt you really need it.

Protip; learn how to typeset your papers in something like LyX and integrate Zotero for citation management. The typesetting usually got me a few extra points alone.

Same - can sync snapshots from Truenas to Backblaze.

If you want to get real fancy you could stash an N40L cube server at your mom’s house where she will never find it and VPN back to your local network and replicate snapshots to it

It worked perfectly well to install though? Like why does it matter if its old