Open office is free and similar to word. I use it and it works great
Hmmm thank you. Is Open Office the successor to LibreOffice, or unconnected? I remember that 1) one of the major open source word processors got abandoned and 2) I have downloaded (2) freeware word processors in my life, one on my first laptop and one on my first smartphone, and been reduced to anxiety-avoidance behaviors by both.
Though the latter was, I think, due as much to difficulties with the Android OS and how it handles saving files as anything about the software, it was still a huge pain and major disappointment.
The WP I tried in my teens had its own file type that would only open in itself, so I’d have had to download the application again on any device I wanted to use to view them, which turned out to be suboptimal for writing papers that I needed to be able to print from the library computers, and/or email to my teachers.
The expectation that my files will be reduced to unreadable junk if the dev team gets distracted or killed by a freak meteor or whatever isn’t much easier on the anxiety brain than the knowledge that my files are not in my possession but that of a megacorporation, tbh. Which is I suppose why all the alternatives to Word that I’ve explored have been unsatisfactory.