Most universities (not all) will accept a GED as equivalent to a high school diploma. You can check this by looking in Section C3 of the “Common Data Set”, which most universities (not all) make available online.
Since you are posting in the “California Colleges” section, I just looked up the CDS for a UC school (Davis) and a Cal State school (Fullerton). They both accept the GED as equivalent to a diploma.
But note that just having a high school diploma or GED may not be enough. Universities will probably also want to see your high school grades. Many GED-holders dropped out of high school with unimpressive grades. If your high school grades weren’t good, then you may have trouble getting into a competitive university, even if you have a GED (of course, the same could be true if you had a diploma and unimpressive grades).
So it might be a good idea to attend community college first, even if this is not required. Your GED alone probably won’t make you an attractive candidate at more competitive 4-year universities (unless you have something else going for you, like high SAT or ACT scores). But if you go to a CC first and get good grades, then you would likely be an attractive transfer candidate after two years.