A Textbook is good enough for self learning. Almost all university learning is "self learning", at least that has been the case for my mathematical training.
> It's a different mindset from a formal academic setting, where there's a strong focus on cheating prevention.
What? Who cares about cheating prevention, most of my classes had oral exams, you can't cheat there.
These were master and late Bachelor courses, so 30 people at most. Exams lasted around 60 minutes, of which around 45 were questions.
>how many questions are asked?
Totally depends on the subject and how the exam goes.
>What's it like in general?
Your professor is poking you with questions. Usually he has prepared some general questions and then asks follow ups. It might go something like this. "What is X Theorem? What does it represent geometrically? Does conditions Z need to be true for the Theorems to hold? Can you name a counter example? How does the proof (discussed in lecture) look like? How exactly do you construct that part? Where do you need that condition? Here is a similar theorem (not discussed in class), can you outline a proof for this?"
I agree with you. It's been my experience though that tracking down solutions manuals for textbooks is very hard. Presumably because they want them out of the hands of students (to prevent cheating).
> It's a different mindset from a formal academic setting, where there's a strong focus on cheating prevention.
What? Who cares about cheating prevention, most of my classes had oral exams, you can't cheat there.