TLDR: I recently found out there is "deprecated" XFA format that acrobat still uses in their programs, and government forms have those for dynamic contents in the form that we cannot fill using other softwares. Looking for solutions.
This has been a problem since a long time. Back in 2020 I had dual boot because I needed acrobat to fill PDF forms, but after finding xournal++ program I nuked windows partition. Windows update messing up grub was one of the reason I decided to nuke windows and looking at the posts recently it's still a huge issue.
So the problem I recently encountered is that even the government issued PDF forms need acrobat reader (which is free software for PDF, but only available in windows and mac). Which I didn't think would be an issue and just filled the form in Firefox.
Turns out that was problematic as the PDF forms has fields that are automatically filled, calculated from other fields, only made available when certain checkboxes are checked, etc. and Firefox doesn't support that. Even trying to install the acrobat reader snap (which uses wine) in a VM and opening the PDF on it didn't work. The UI makes me think it's a really old version of the reader.
So without searching for other devices (and filling a PDF with my sensitive information) what solution is there? Installing windows is a hassle even in a VM, and it will use up precious SSD memory. But that's the only solution I can think of.
I also found masterpdf or something like that which the Arch wiki says has support for that, but it didn't work. It says XFA forms are converted to acro forms, and the dynamic part doesn't work. There are websites that promise to work for such forms, but I'm not going to be putting sensitive info on web apps.
I do have a career, I am a specialist of (kinda) GIS and data analysis related to hydrology. I'm currently on the path to complete my PhD within the next year. I have been really successful at pitching my programming ideas on non-programming domain. Solve problems for clients, make applications/algorithms that can outperform what they had before. It does sometimes make me feel like I'm a bit too wide on my skillsets related to others in my field, but at least in my immediate circles, I am still as good in the core aspects of my field. But there are so many people that are better specialist than me if I search around.
But now, due to the current climate, and situation in the USA, I have been thinking I might have to move to another country before I finish PhD, and I might not be able to find a job in another country immediately, so I'm thinking of finding some small gigs I could do for some side income.