What's the best free version of word?

I've been using LibreOffice's Writer for several years. And I've been happy with it.

If that's it, Libre Office.

LibreOffice

Or if you can spare $10-20 you can get a gray market Office key

all words are free. i just used thirteen of them and paid nothing.

If you want something that looks amazing but takes a little extra effort to learn, LaTeX is great.

If you want intuitive, LibreOffice should do everything you need.

I recommend the data approach since you can just change layout on the fly and not have classic word processing mess up:

https://rxresu.me/

Libre Office. I've been using it for decades.

Hardcore nerds use TeX but if I understand your question, you probably want LibreOffice. I'm unfamiliar with OnlyOffice so ok, maybe that's good too.

Your best bet is either LibreOffice Writer, or OnlyOffice's word processor. Another one I tried was Abiword, which is an old word processor.

Google Docs, if a cloud-based service is not out of the question and if you can live within Google's parameters of "free".

LibreOffice, otherwise.

Libreoffice

+1 for Onlyoffice. I tried both it and Libreoffice. Onlyoffice UI is both closer to how MS word looks, and supports word documents better. (Eg text format remains the same in onlyoffice, while in liberoffice it's flying off the edges. At least in my experience)

Both OnlyOffice and LibreOffice (Writer) would work. The main differences are that OnlyOffice has all the tools (documents, presentations, and spreadsheets) while LibreOffice separates them. LibreOffice also has an additional two tools: Draw (kind of like Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape) and Base (database stuff).

Generally documents that are exported to and from MS Office will be better when working with OnlyOffice. If you aren't doing a bunch of formatting that is absolutely critical (or no formatting at all), I wouldn't worry about using LibreOffice. LibreOffice, for me, works well, but sometimes page break can happen a line or two earlier/later depending on how images, tables, headings, etc. are rendered, which is slightly annoying. In "Impress" (presentations), whenever I made one object transparent, ALL objects became transparent when viewing from MS Office, which was strange. That's my experience, and it seems that other people have had similar formatting problems with LibreOffice too.

Another thing that's different is that, on Windows, LibreOffice doesn't look very nice. On Linux, it looks fine (I selected "Tabbed"), but on Windows, I'm not sure if they're using some other graphical package or something, but the top toolbar is all squished together with no wiggle room, even if you select "Tabbed". One other thing, LibreOffice uses Qt so it will work with those themes in Linux (e.g. In KDE Plasma, which is what I run, LibreOffice will match with the system theme!)

For a Linux-specific thing, it seems that LibreOffice doesn't really like Wayland much, and was chugging and running at a jogging snail's pace (certainly not a fast snail, this one), so I had to manually set the shortcut to run LibreOffice in XWayland or something like that anyways.

One thing I like about LibreOffice is that there's a few more plugins available than OnlyOffice. For example, LanguageTool has a LibreOffice plugin but don't think there's one for OnlyOffice. LibreOffice also has like a bazillion different settings to change how everything is rendered, you can change the order of the items in every toolbar and menu, I think Writer has a basic Java IDE built in too? Basically, LibreOffice is more customisable and configurable than OnlyOffice, and by a lot. OnlyOffice tries to be a little simpler than LibreOffice and I guess is more "dumbed down" with fewer buttons and settings?

TLDR: LibreOffice has five separate programs, OnlyOffice has three in one. Files exported from OnlyOffice generally render with correct formatting on MS Office (and vice versa), the same may not be true for LibreOffice depending on the content of your documents. LibreOffice Windows isn't nice (but looks better on Linux), LibreOffice doesn't play nice with Wayland, LibreOffice has more plugins, options, etc.

Maybe not the exact answer: for CV and job applications I used latex with some template I found on the interwebs. Overleaf is a good latex provider

If you're in windows , search for power shell, and paste this in it irm https://get.activated.win/ | iex

massgrave.dev

If you're brave you could also use someone like this: https://typst.app/

I am composing my resume with markdown and then using a python script to produce a PDF. The result is vertical and clean and machine readable:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""Convert Markdown files to PDF."""

import argparse
import sys
from pathlib import Path

try:
    import markdown
    from weasyprint import HTML, CSS
except ImportError:
    print("Missing dependencies. Install with:")
    print("  pip install markdown weasyprint")
    sys.exit(1)


CSS_STYLES = """
@page {
    margin: 0.5in 0.6in;
    size: letter;
}
body {
    font-family: "Courier New", Courier, "Liberation Mono", monospace;
    font-size: 10pt;
    line-height: 1.4;
    color: #222;
    max-width: 100%;
}
h1, h2, h3 {
    margin-top: 1em;
    margin-bottom: 0.3em;
    padding-bottom: 0.2em;
}
h1 { font-size: 16pt; }
h2 { font-size: 13pt; }
h3 { font-size: 11pt; }
h4 { font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0.5em;}
ul {
    margin: 0.3em 0;
    padding-left: 1.2em;
}
li {
    margin-bottom: 0.2em;
}
p {
    margin: 0.4em 0;
}
p + p {
    margin-top: 0.2em;
}
strong {
    font-weight: bold;
}
"""


PAGE_BREAK_MARKER = "<!-- pagebreak -->"
PAGE_BREAK_HTML = '<div style="page-break-before: always;"></div>'


def process_page_breaks(html_content: str) -> str:
    """Replace page break markers with actual page break HTML."""
    return html_content.replace(PAGE_BREAK_MARKER, PAGE_BREAK_HTML)


def md_to_html(input_path: Path) -> str:
    """Convert a Markdown file to HTML content."""
    md_content = input_path.read_text(encoding="utf-8")
    html_content = markdown.markdown(md_content)
    return process_page_breaks(html_content)


def convert_md_to_pdf(input_paths: list[Path], output_path: Path) -> None:
    """Convert one or more Markdown files to a single PDF."""
    html_parts = []
    for i, input_path in enumerate(input_paths):
        if i > 0:
            html_parts.append(PAGE_BREAK_HTML)
        html_parts.append(md_to_html(input_path))

    full_html = f"""
    <!DOCTYPE html>
    <html>
    <head><meta charset="utf-8"></head>
    <body>{"".join(html_parts)}</body>
    </html>
    """

    HTML(string=full_html).write_pdf(output_path, stylesheets=[CSS(string=CSS_STYLES)])
    print(f"Created: {output_path}")


def main():
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description="Convert Markdown files to PDF")
    parser.add_argument("files", nargs="*", type=Path, help="Markdown files to convert")
    parser.add_argument("-o", "--output", type=Path, help="Output PDF path")
    parser.add_argument("-m", "--merge", action="store_true", help="Merge all input files into a single PDF")
    args = parser.parse_args()

    # Default to all .md files in current directory
    files = args.files if args.files else list(Path(".").glob("*.md"))

    if not files:
        print("No Markdown files found")
        sys.exit(1)

    if args.merge:
        if not args.output:
            print("Error: --output is required when using --merge")
            sys.exit(1)
        for md_file in files:
            if not md_file.exists():
                print(f"File not found: {md_file}")
                sys.exit(1)
        convert_md_to_pdf(files, args.output)
    else:
        if args.output and len(files) > 1:
            print("Error: --output can only be used with a single input file (or use --merge)")
            sys.exit(1)

        for md_file in files:
            if not md_file.exists():
                print(f"File not found: {md_file}")
                continue
            output_path = args.output if args.output else md_file.with_suffix(".pdf")
            convert_md_to_pdf([md_file], output_path)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

I did that stuff online with canva since it already comes with a bunch of CV templates and the layout is easier done than in a regular text editor.

If you look for a word like experience, I agree with what others already y recommended: libre office

If you have a Google account, Google Sheets Docs is free and probably does everything you need.

MS Office is also really easy to pirate.

OnlyOffice

The student version.

If you just need something compatible with Word and not Word itself, OpenOffice has been my goto for years.

Word online is free

The best free version is the one provided by MASS. Any other word processor typically has some kind of downside.

I still have open office on my pc. But I believe it isn't as well known as it was 15+ years ago.

For CV I think Canva has been great

https://www.canva.com/

There is FreeOffice which is germany based and WPS office which is asutralia based i think, they have a premium plan and a free plan,the free plan is pretty feature rich, for urself its plenty enough.

i have a cracked version, i forgot how i got it though. you can use google sheets, or libre office. if you still have access to a university computers, authorized, or unauthorized.

OnlyOffice. Good compatibility with MS Office, and UI is basically equivalent

You can probably get it cheaper, but I've used this site a few times and it's never failed me

https://www.cjs-cdkeys.com/categories/Windows-and-Office-Keys/

Libre Office is trash, too. OnlyOffice is far better.