Not sure if this applies for your university VPN but with VPN providers an important part of making a successful VPN connection and use it browse the Internet, is that the DNS servers in /etc/resolv.conf are correct. You can check and see any difference of the content of that file, before and after starting the VPN connection.

@sga I think you have to ask an admin of the university because a timeout is usually a problem on the server side.

since i forgot to mention it earlier, we have to renew our certificates almost every 6 months, and i renewed them recently (around the time of breakage start, but (i may be misremembering) i think i connected with new certs also, before renewal, the vpn worked both on my phone and laptop, now it only works on phone, i am now trying to use it on a live usb

It may not apply to you but, from my own experience and assuming you are on KDE :

Remove your ethernet connection. Remove your VPN connection. Recreate an ethernet connection then the VPN. Never set 'autoconnect'.

Before putting your computer to sleep/shutdown, manually disconnect from the VPN.

@sga ok, since you didn't mention that before, that would be a possible source of error.

#####******************############**************
STUFF I HAVE WRITTEN
##############*************************
Intentionally not written nicely to be able to distinguish
######################***************************
remote had the my college's vpn domain vpn.coll.eg.e
CA had college's certificate file name (in the same dir as config)
cert myid.crt
key myid.key


##############################################
# Sample client-side OpenVPN 2.0 config file #
# for connecting to multi-client server.     #
#                                            #
# This configuration can be used by multiple #
# clients, however each client should have   #
# its own cert and key files.                #
#                                            #
# On Windows, you might want to rename this  #
# file so it has a .ovpn extension           #
##############################################

# Specify that we are a client and that we
# will be pulling certain config file directives
# from the server.
client

# Use the same setting as you are using on
# the server.
# On most systems, the VPN will not function
# unless you partially or fully disable
# the firewall for the TUN/TAP interface.
;dev tap
dev tun

# Windows needs the TAP-Win32 adapter name
# from the Network Connections panel
# if you have more than one.  On XP SP2,
# you may need to disable the firewall
# for the TAP adapter.
;dev-node MyTap

# Are we connecting to a TCP or
# UDP server?  Use the same setting as
# on the server.
;proto tcp
proto udp

# The hostname/IP and port of the server.
# You can have multiple remote entries
# to load balance between the servers.
;remote my-server-1 1194
;remote my-server-2 1194
remote 
port 1194

# Choose a random host from the remote
# list for load-balancing.  Otherwise
# try hosts in the order specified.
;remote-random

# Keep trying indefinitely to resolve the
# host name of the OpenVPN server.  Very useful
# on machines which are not permanently connected
# to the internet such as laptops.
resolv-retry infinite

# Most clients don't need to bind to
# a specific local port number.
nobind

# Downgrade privileges after initialization (non-Windows only)
;user nobody
;group nobody

# Try to preserve some state across restarts.
persist-key
persist-tun

# If you are connecting through an
# HTTP proxy to reach the actual OpenVPN
# server, put the proxy server/IP and
# port number here.  See the man page
# if your proxy server requires
# authentication.
;http-proxy-retry # retry on connection failures
;http-proxy [proxy server] [proxy port #]

# Wireless networks often produce a lot
# of duplicate packets.  Set this flag
# to silence duplicate packet warnings.
;mute-replay-warnings

# SSL/TLS parms.
# See the server config file for more
# description.  It's best to use
# a separate .crt/.key file pair
# for each client.  A single ca
# file can be used for all clients.
ca 
cert 
key 

# Verify server certificate by checking
# that the certicate has the nsCertType
# field set to "server".  This is an
# important precaution to protect against
# a potential attack discussed here:
#  http://openvpn.net/howto.html#mitm
#
# To use this feature, you will need to generate
# your server certificates with the nsCertType
# field set to "server".  The build-key-server
# script in the easy-rsa folder will do this.
;ns-cert-type server

# If a tls-auth key is used on the server
# then every client must also have the key.
tls-auth ta.key 1

# Select a cryptographic cipher.
# If the cipher option is used on the server
# then you must also specify it here.
cipher AES-128-CBC
;cipher BF-CBC

# Enable compression on the VPN link.
# Don't enable this unless it is also
# enabled in the server config file.
comp-lzo

# Set log file verbosity.
verb 3

# Silence repeating messages
;mute 20

route-method exe
route-delay 2

auth-user-pass

Check the logs, but it's probably related to the deprecation of compression. OpenVPN 2.6 now requires a flag client-side to enable it as it is known to be the cause of too many vulnerabilities.

Add

comp-lzo yes
allow-compression yes

To your config and try again. If it still doesn't work set log level to 4, redact personal info and post the logs.