I need it for doing CVs and job applications and that’s literally it.
OnlyOffice
Word online is free
I recommend the data approach since you can just change layout on the fly and not have classic word processing mess up:
This looks great; will play with it. I wonder if it’s got versioning.
Cool, thanks for linking this, I was just looking for something like this!
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.
Ahhhh I really struggled with Libre earlier I’m old and neurodiverse and can’t handle the layout. Does only office have a similar layout to word?
I uninstalled Libre for OnlyOffice when it was impossible to get a normal full-sized scroll bar. Haven’t looked back.
If you use Windows, yeah, LibreOffice doesn’t look all that nice. Setting it to “tabbed” view mode makes it a bit better (try that first)

but the icons are still pretty small with little padding (on Windows at least. On Linux it is perfectly fine, so I use LibreOffice!). OnlyOffice will be more padded and has bigger icons than LibreOffice in Windows, yeah. I think it would work.
That’s so helpful thanks so much! Have a lovely weekend
OnlyOffice. Good compatibility with MS Office, and UI is basically equivalent
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.
LibreOffice
Or if you can spare $10-20 you can get a gray market Office key
What’s a grey market office key
If I understand it correctly, Microsoft sells discounted keys to organizations as part of their Volume Licensing for businesses.
Some places on the internet take advantage of that, and sell the keys individually.
More likely it is a key purchased with a stolen credit card. Do not use gray markets
Highly unlikely. The grey market keys are clearly for large companies. You couldn’t purchase thousands of keys with a stolen credit card.
Take this blog post from Factorio a few years ago, they much rather you pirate the game than use gray markets. (Second header)
K. We aren’t talking about game theft, we are talking about a specific known issue that Microsoft has talked about. Thanks for linking to an unrelated article?
Gray markets are just full of stolen stuff. To think something else is just fooling yourself.
Anyway, keep using it if you want but they are not “I am so smart for finding it cheaper” but rather “I don’t mind support illegal activities”
Oh thank you
massgrave.dev
For CV I think Canva has been great
I’ve been using LibreOffice’s Writer for several years. And I’ve been happy with it.
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.
+1 to LaTex. It excels at carefully laying out a short document for maximum clarity. Perfect for a CV or resume.
It’s worth mentioning that LaTex can signal to employers that the candidate might have a very advanced degree or equivalent nerd experience, of some kind.
There is a perception that most LaTex users encounter it while doing advanced science work or getting an advanced degree.
Though the initial learning curve can seem a bit intimidating if you’re used to something like word, which does everything for you with a single button.
Especially for things like picking which packages to use, or how to make a functional document from it.
Libre Office is trash, too. OnlyOffice is far better.
As someone who used Microsoft Office 2003 to get through college in 2020. They’re all the same shit.
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
Is Overleaf an Interleaf clone? My lord that’s ancient.
Are we anti google docs here? I feel like it has everything word does and you can easily save/download files onto your computer as a PDF.
If that doesn’t work, you can use word online! It’s basically MS word, you just can’t access it offline. It’s on the web.
Thanks when I save docs from online and try to open them on my laptop it comes up with the “give me money” pop up.
Does Google docs layout look anything like word?
Given that many here are anti google in general, that would mean anti google docs by extension.
Ah, okay. I thought that might be the case.
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/








