Hi Nikhil,
In IIT computer science is there use of Linux or windows? And are we allowed to install our own distros and if not, atleast use a liveCD?
I passed out from IIT Bombay Computer Science Department(CSE) last year. Almost all computers in our department had linux installed on them (Fedora Core distro). and we were not allowed to work on Window$ unless the project requires it. The department machines were managed by department system admins which were two or more students from M.Tech.
We had the concept of private labs and public labs. Depending on your project you will be assign a private lab and a computer from that lab. suppose your project is in formal systems then you will work on formal system lab, and public lab are for open for all the students in CSE. The private labs is managed by sysads which is one of the student working in that private lab., if he is your good friend then you can install any distro on your machine :). And if you have a pc in your hostel room, you can install anything you want on it.
This may be a bit offtopic but have you as a current student or someone who has passed out, gotten time and facilities to write your own programs, not related to the syllabus?
You can anything you want in IIT, write you own programs, play computer games just complete your assignments on time :).
How much of Linux is actually thought in IIT?
Linux is not thought in IIT. you will have a system lab course in first year in which you have complete many assignment from writing c programs , shell scripts, perl programs, some web programming in jave,php or perl. programming in some odd language you will never use in your life :D and one big project. that is enough to get used with any systems i guess. In os course you will have to write some code to test the behaviour of os in some situation (not particularly linux related but you have to write it on linux).
I hope I answered you questions. If you have other doubts then write to me.
Regards, -Tushar. -- "I'd have blown my top, because I want to beat this damn thing, as long as I've gone this far. I can't just leave it after I've found out so much about it. I have to keep going to find out ultimately what is the matter with it in the end." Richard P. Feynman