You're on Linux Mint already, which is great. As others have said, Linux drives the world. Pretty much anything you write for a server will be running on Linux.
There's a high likelihood that universities will either have a programming environment from before 2010 or before 2020. They are often slow to change. Bootcamps mostly use the tools that are most hip.
If you want to start with Python, I recommend and integrated development environment (IDE) like PyCharm. It handles a great deal for you and allows you to learn the low level stuff and python tooling at your own pace. Stuff like virtual environments, debugging with breakpoints, documentation,
If you're interested in anything surrounding data science JupyterNotebook is great as it allows you to see the output of your code as you progress. That output can also be visual (graphs, images, variable values, etc.)