I need it for doing CVs and job applications and that’s literally it.
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.
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.
OnlyOffice
I am composing documents in markdown format and then using a python script to produce a PDF:
#!/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()Libre office was too clunky for my usage. Only office is FOSS, lightweight, and cross-platform.
Libre Office. I’ve been using it for decades.
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
If that’s it, Libre Office.
Thanks mate! I’ve downloaded it but I’m really struggling with the layout any tips? it’s so different looking to word
I find it’s exactly identical to MSWord, but from the mso97 days before the Ribbon bollocks. I used o97 Word because it was like win3.1 Word … word-perfect? It’s been a while.
But, TL/DR, LOWord is like Classic MSOffice from when it didn’t suck. This will not help you adjust, but hopefully the knowledge that you’re going back to a better era of UX could help blunt the pain.
Go carefully, and have your favourite vice handy to goose the positive reinforcement loop.
Thanks mate
Also if you’re using windows and avoiding acrobat try Sumatra for reading pdfs. FOSS is the way. Libre draw also does document signing for pdfs
I recommend the data approach since you can just change layout on the fly and not have classic word processing mess up:
Cool, thanks for linking this, I was just looking for something like this!
I’ve been using LibreOffice’s Writer for several years. And I’ve been happy with it.
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.
all words are free. i just used thirteen of them and paid nothing.
I used fourteen of them and got arrested for hate speech, so I think your theory has a flaw and I blame minorities
No it’s not minorities it’s trans people they somehow caused it by sneakily sneaking in a bathroom
You are paying with time and you are DYING. Hell, i am typing right now! That means that I’m also DYING RIGHT NOW!
proceeds to crash out
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.
Oh thank you
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”
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?
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
