I’ve tried so many times to switch to LibreOffice, but as far as I can tell it’s just not made for novelists. It regularly shits itself when dealing with a 300k manuscript that Word has never given me problems with.

I genuinely tried using it for a full year, using it on Linux even, to see if it was just me being cranky about changes to my writing routine…and maybe it’s still just me, but I eventually went back to Windows and my old copy of Microsoft Word 2010.

As far as I can tell, using Libre Office (or Open Office) as an actual writer seems to be a niche enough use case that developers don’t fix some of the issues that crop up that are specific to the needs of a novelist. It also gets laggy and unreliable for long word counts.

But if you need to make a basic sign to be printed out, or letters, or use it for short things like so many people use Word for in an office setting, it probably is ok.

I just had trouble with it behaving poorly with my long-format works in ways that MS Word never crapped out on me for.