Best Free Word Processor

[radiometer]

The word Processor in my MS Works has stopped working. I have learned this is a known problem. I haven't yet found a solution to the problem.
I'm considering selecting a free word processor. I see a number of them out there. Which are the better ones in your opinion. I don't need a complete office program, just a word processor.
Thank you for any attention to my question.

 

[Liquid_Turbo]

Openoffice.Org

Might as well get a free complete office program

 

[wavinwayne]

Originally Posted By: Liquid_Turbo
Openoffice.Org

Might as well get a free complete office program


I use the Open Office suite of apps on my office PC and my Mac, and it does everything an office app should, IMO.

 

[SrDriver]

My first choice would be Jarte.

Link To Jarte

My second choice would be Abiword

Link To Abiword

 

[AuthorEditor]

Another vote for Open Office. It's like Word used to be before they added endless bloat that almost no writer ever needs. Word 2007 is absolutely atrocious, and I have to use it every day at work.

 

[eljefino]

Open office is pretty good, but my wife hates its noninterfacing with modern versions of MS office... fancy stuff like "Track changes" doesn't really work right, according to her.

I like the pdf export and the free price. It goes MUCH better on a moderately peppy system; it itself is kinda bloated.

 

[SLCraig]

Originally Posted By: eljefino
It goes MUCH better on a moderately peppy system; it itself is kinda bloated.


I noticed this too. It's slow on an older machine.
It's not as bad as Acrobat though. That is just slow all the time. (Foxit for the win)

 

[Frbl]

Openoffice is more complete - but also bloated and slow-loading on an older machine.

Abiword is lithe, though much less powerful.

I use them both.

 

[CarbonSteel]

Originally Posted By: Liquid_Turbo
Openoffice.Org. Might as well get a free complete office program

+1 For OpenOffice

 

[scurvy]

Ditto the comments for OpenOffice. It's 99% of what I need in an office suite that's free (as in beer). Unfortunately it's still mighty bloated for what I need it to do, but in many ways better than the alternative - paying microsoft for bloatware full of annoying 'features' I don't need.

To be brutally honest, Vim, Textedit & notepad do about 90% of all my word processing well on their own. I keep meaning to learn LaTeX for more involved typesetting, but that's right up there with learning morse code and to play the banjo on my list.

 

[webfors]

if you just need the word processor, abiword is a good way to go. For a full suite, Openoffice is hard to beat.

 

[uc50ic4more]

By the by, BITOG'ers, many (if not all?) of the OpenOffice developers have jumped ship after Sun was acquired by Oracle. They've forked the project and are now calling it LibreOffice.

The new project is being handled by the Document Foundation and is sponsored, apparently, by Canonical, Novell and Google. Here's some more info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice

http://gericom.wordpress.com/2010/09/28/...-novell-google/

That now leaves us with OpenOffice, Go-OO (which is actually what Debian and Debian derivatives like Ubuntu have been using under the "Openoffice.org" name!) and now LibreOffice with essentially the same code base.

 

[Errtt]

Open Office

 

[greenaccord02]

For lightweight stuff, Abiword. If I need some more serious capabilities, then out comes the OpenOffice.

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

I agree with AbiWord, very fast.

However, since you're coming from MS Works, I suggest using a better Open Office derivative, Go OpenOffice, http://www.go-oo.org

It offers much better MS Works file importing than the standard Open Office product.

 

[Iain]

Originally Posted By: krholm
The word Processor in my MS Works has stopped working. I have learned this is a known problem. I haven't yet found a solution to the problem.
I'm considering selecting a free word processor. I see a number of them out there. Which are the better ones in your opinion. I don't need a complete office program, just a word processor.
Thank you for any attention to my question.

What OS are you running?

Have you tried to reinstall MS Works (whatever that is)?

Reason I'm asking is, be very leery of freeware like Open Office. Could be something unpleasant lurking in it as my anti-virus complains everytime I run OO.

My plans are to uninstall Open Office and purchase and install MS Office 2010 as it has some new features I'm interested in that OO will probably never have.

 

[47HO]

Quote:
Reason I'm asking is, be very leery of freeware like Open Office.


Very misinformed statement.

 

[97tbird]

Originally Posted By: Iain

be very leery of freeware like Open Office. Could be something unpleasant lurking in it as my anti-virus complains everytime I run OO.


strange...I use openoffice with Ubuntu 10.10 and several of my friends use it too, (who work in IT fields), and neither I nor they have ever had a problem, or an alert of any kind.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: 97tbird
Originally Posted By: Iain

be very leery of freeware like Open Office. Could be something unpleasant lurking in it as my anti-virus complains everytime I run OO.


strange...I use openoffice with Ubuntu 10.10 and several of my friends use it too, (who work in IT fields), and neither I nor they have ever had a problem, or an alert of any kind.


I wonder if there is an O add-on, plug or even a macro associated with a specific document that, when being opened, is tripping his A/V.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: ToyotaNSaturn
However, since you're coming from MS Works, I suggest using a better Open Office derivative, Go OpenOffice, http://www.go-oo.org



Go-OO, as I understand it, is simply O with a bunch of patches and extra stuff that were not ever accepted into the main line releases of O. LibreOffice is pretty much Go-OO re-branded.

If you use Ubuntu, Mint, Debian or many other Linux distributions you already *are* using Go-OO. (It's in the repositories as Openoffice.org but it *includes* all of Go-OO, but retains the O branding. They will all be soon switching to the LibreOffice packages and branding.)