It sounds like you will be buying the laptop and that it won't have loads of college security stuff on it, which is good for what you want to do. Depending on your needs in terms of bespoke software, Linux Mint OS might solve a lot of your issues. Piece of piss to install and way better option than Windows. As a former Windows user since W95, I moved to Linux Mint this year and I will never go back. I had an old Windows 10 machine that was unable to run Windows 11, so I installed Mint on it and its like a new machine. The OS is quite similar to Windows in a lot of ways. You can even try it out live from the bootable USB before you install. I tried it like that and within about 30 seconds I was hammering the install button. Having said all this, if you are required to give the laptop to the college to install stuff on, you might be a bit limited.