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This document seeks to simply sum up as completely as possible and in no particular order free (not always open source) word processors that can be downloaded from the web. It contains software for Linux, Windows, Mac OS and DOS (yes, DOS).

Not all these programs are word processors that let you embed pictures, draw tables and equations and so forth. They are considered from the point of view of someone who wants to write a document like a letter or a novel. The system resources needed are sometimes noted (qualitatively), but comments are relative to what would today be considered a very low-end system. If the list seems tilted towards Windows programs, that is a reflection of what is out there.

LaTeX is intentionally glossed over. It's great, it's free, it's powerful, the documents look fantastic; it's not a word processor (which is a good thing), it's a typesetting engine. Here is not the place to enter into the debate about which approach is better. Horses for courses. Similarly, there are no dedicated desktop publishing programs either. If you want DTP, try PagePlus or Scribus.

This list does include unmaintained programs – after all, they are often perfectly useful – but does not included unmaintained programs which never got out of the beta stage (for example Maxwell and GWP). The programs here are supposed to be useful for writers.

What makes a free word processor? Each program listed here fulfills (more or less, often less) five criteria:

Description: Full office suite, originally based on Sun's StarOffice but since heavily developed by the open source community, including Sun itself. Can do pretty much everything that the big commercial office packages can do. From the website: “OpenOffice.org the product is a multi-platform office productivity suite. It includes the key desktop applications, such as a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, and drawing program, with a user interface and feature set similar to other office suites.” Lots of import and export capabilities, excellent internationalisation, requires a reasonably modern machine to run well. Exports to .pdf.

Available for: Windows, Linux, Solaris, LinuxPPC, Mac OS X (through X11), FreeBSD.

Breeze is a simple Windows 3.1 era word processor that can output to .rtf. It is no longer in development.

Personal experience: On modern machines fast and reliable but of course limited capabilities.

Variations: There is a DOS version but it does not appear to have .rtf output; it does allow a text file to be turned into a DOS executable (.exe) file to be distributed as a sort of electronic book.

Includes the interestingly named Pathetic Writer (PW). This is a light-weight office package with a remarkable range of abilities. From the website: “Siag Office is a tightly integrated, free office package. It consists of the spreadsheet Siag, the word processor PW, the animation program Egon, the text editor XedPlus, the file manager Xfiler and the previewer Gvu”. Punches way above its weight in features for the download size.

Smallish word processor using “the same word processing engine used by Windows' WordPad”. It has a bigger brother which you pay for, but is pretty useful as it is. Useful set of capabilities.

Personal experience: As reliable as any Windows application that does not overtax system resources. Trouble-free.

Handles .rtf natively. From the website: “Ted is a text processor running under X Windows on Unix/Linux systems. Ted was developed as a standard easy word processor, having the role of WordPad on MS-Windows. Since then, Ted has evolved to a real word processor that still has the same easy appearance as the original.”

Personal experience: If you want a program that is reliable, fast, and does not hog system resources, this is an excellent choice.

A writer's toolkit word processor, specialising in helping manage large projects like a novel for example. From the website: “I'm a programmer and a novelist, and yWriter is the result of 3 or 4 years of development. I really struggled over my first novel because I wrote whole slabs of text into a great big word processor file and tried to make sense of the whole thing at once. I then tried saving each chapter to individual files with great long descriptive filenames, but moving scenes around was a nuisance and I couldn't get an overview of the whole thing (or easily search for one word amongst 32 files) In the end I realised a dedicated program was the way to go, and yWriter is the result. It may look simple, but as the author of three books written with this tool I can guarantee it has everything needed to get a first draft together.”

Personal experience: Low system demands means it is very stable and its tools are very useful if you are working on the sort of project it is designed for.

The writer's word processor RoughDraft has gone from donationware to freeware, although no doubt donations will still be accepted. From the website: "RoughDraft is a freeware word processor for Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000 and XP. Although suitable for general use, it has features specifically designed for creative writing: novels, short stories, articles, plays and screenplays. It's designed to be as practical as possible, offering all the features you need, but without being complicated or awkward to use." The website also gives a very extensive list of features.

This is a DOS (and OS/2) word processor that can read and write .rtf files (keep in mind that rtf is evolving and it won't read modern rtf faultlessly). It is free. It is also, of course, blindingly fast on any vaguely modern machine. The white text on a blue screen is very easy on the eyes compared to a black on white GUI window, especially when running in a full-screen DOS window. It can be run on virtually any hardware using some combination of DOS emulators and/or hardware emulators, for example QEMU, Bochs, dosemu or dosbox. Some international versions are available here (a site containing loads of other really useful DOSware).

Personal experience: Reliable, low system requirements and limited capabilities by modern standards.

Available for: MS-DOS compatible systems (including FreeDOS). Should run on OS/2.

WordPerfect for the Apple IIe, IIc and IIgs is in the public domain. It is close to fully compatible with WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, whose files can be read by many programs. Not tested, may not be capable of .rtf file output, but nifty to know...

Personal experience: If it is anything like WordPerfect for DOS 5.1, it's still a pretty useful thing.

This is a Linux version of WordPerfect and genuine port. A somewhat limited version was released for download and can still be found. Limited in capabilities and tricky to install (uses some old libraries), it is nevertheless available. Follow the instructions at the download site carefully and it should work. Legal status of this is dubious; it may fall into the category of 'abandonware', and since abandonment is not equivalent to release into the public domain – regardless of what distributors of abandonware may say or think – use of this version should perhaps be considered as an experiment. There is a license for the release which forbids commercial use.

Personal experience: Annoying to set up, some useful tools stripped out. Not really worth the trouble.

Available for: Linux on x86. There exists an .rpm apparently, otherwise it is a 'manual' installation.

This is a older Mac version of WordPerfect. Very complete earlier era software. Works well under Classic environment on OS X as well.

Personal experience: Trouble free and still useful. Excellent way of recovering data from those old WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS files, too.

An online word processor, which means it runs on any platform capable of running a modern Mozilla-based browser (Firefox 1.5 upwards, say). Not particularly fully featured and not much use of you are not on the net; in development so maybe should not be judged too quickly.

Available for: Anything running a modern Mozilla-type browser. Needs javascript.

An online word processor, as offered by all-conquering Google Corporation! I've never tried it.

One of the premier open source word processors. Forms part of the GNOME Office suite. Powerful, lightweight and with excellent internationalisation. Makes a good choice for everything but the most esoteric applications of a word processor. Exports to .pdf.

Personal experience: Trouble-free, easy and highly compatible with the other major products out there. Probably the best of the genuine Microsoft Word replacement options for 90+% of users.

Available for: From the website: “Windows 95 onward, GNU/Linux, BSD, Solaris (2.6, 7,8,9,10), AIX, HP/UX (10.20, 11.0), OSF/1, Tru64, Mac OS X 10.2 or later”. Also QNX and BeOS (sort of).

From the website: “KOffice is a free, integrated office suite for KDE, the K Desktop Environment” and KWord is a “frame-based word processor that can work in two modes: page oriented or layout oriented”. Big, powerful, fairly demanding of system resources but very capable. Getting better all the time, too. Exports to .pdf.

Another lightweight but usefully featured program. Very small download. Can be installed on a 1.44 Mb floppy yet has significant formatting capability. From the website: “TextShield saves files in the universal RTF format, or in plain text. TextShield is both a word processor and a plain text editor. For maximum interchangeability, TextShield has a build-in HTML converter and can save files as Microsoft Word” and some unusual features like “AutoPaste: when enabled on a file, everything that will be copied to the clipboard will automatically be inserted in the document (handy when collecting data from the internet) ”.

Availability: Windows 95 upwards. Win95 may need a DLL updated using riched30.exe.

Lightweight cross-platform word processor. Last update is 2002 but still a useful program.

Available for: Windows 95 onwards, Mac OS (what's now called 'classic') and Linux.

This is not in active development but may be usable enough such that simply ignoring it is not fair. Read the website. Appears it can still be downloaded from here.

Very small by modern standards, really a text editor in the Windows Notepad category but with a few more formatting features, the ability to insert pictures, superscripts and so forth, and the ability to read and write .rtf files. Appears to lack page numbers, headers and footers.

Essentially, an enhanced Widows WordPad, with the capabilities that that implies. Download from here.

Lightweight by modern standards but with useful set of features. The link suggests a shareware archive but the program appears to be freeware. Quite useful.

Another lightweight WordPad-like word processor/editor, although remarkably full-featured. Has good control over page layout and includes spell checker and other word processor-like features. Certainly very full set of capabilities for the download size.

Personal experience: Fast, easy, reliable and just a little different. Worth a look.

Yet another lightweight WordPad-like word processor/editor. Quite full-featured and very useful. Closer to being a word processor than an editor. Plenty of power for download size. No longer maintained but the list of updates at the website gives an idea of its features.

An .rtf editor which specialises in the creation of content (one of the screenshots on the website shows a pulldown menu revealing a rhyming dictionary, for example). Limited formatting capability but impressive and unusual feature set in other ways (export to HTML, sort lines, unit convertor) -- all accessed through a system of plug-ins. Definitely worth a look. It is an active project still being supported.

Another .rtf editor which replaces WordPad with a slightly different feature mix. Features include (quoted, errors and all, from the website): "Import / Export Office Files; Different Bullet Types; Print Preview; Start Calculator, PaintB.,CharMap...; Send Mail; Letter Style; View Pictures; Insert Picture; View HTML files; Insert Object; Play WAV files; Drag n Drop; Different Underscore Settings; Office Ruler; Spelling Checker; customized Cool Bar Picture; Password En- Decryption; Many different Paragraph settings; Improved Spelling Checker; WYSYG FontBox; etc. ..." Appears to be an active project.

DOS word processor which is still being maintained. According to the website: “It can read and edit files in a variety of formats: ASCII, ANSI, Wordstar, WordPerfect, XYWrite, Word, Nota Bene and others”. Does not appear to (directly) include .rtf, but Word and WordPerfect and Wordstar were all common formats which would generally allow interchange with other programs, so it is listed here. Having said that, it uses a limited subset of the formatting commands available in these programs and so it is unwise to assume that a complex document will be successfully transferred; read the documentation. The download site includes VDE2RTF and RTF2VDE which do the obvious, again to a limited extent. Has useful DOS command line syntax options.

Personal experience: Takes a bit of getting used to after typical GUI-based programs, but once it becomes familiar is very fast and capable; there seems to be quite a strong community providing 'after market support', growing mostly out of the HP LX crowd. Hence there are various utilities to turn VDE into a diary, a rolodex and so forth. Takes up so few system resources it can easily sit in a DOS window (or an emulator) while other applications run.

Available for: DOS and anything which can run DOS, which means almost anything at all given the various hardware and DOS emulators that are around (for example QEMU, Bochs, dosemu and dosbox). Also works on HP LX palmtop machines.

LyX is a sort of front end to TeX and LaTeX. It makes them look more like a conventional word processor, without losing the beautiful typesetting qualities of TeX. Getting any word processor-friendly file out is a problem (postscript and pdf are the usual outputs) but it is included since it does offer a sort of option for people who prefer to work in a more word processor-like environment than conventional LaTeX offers. Can produce LaTeX-type files, but they are not identical. .rtf is a problem, since word processors and LyX/LaTeX use different paradigms so a perfect translation is in a sense impossible. It is possible to save from LyX into LaTeX then transllate into .rtf using LaTeX2rtf. Results cannot be guaranteed.

Personal experience: LaTeX offers the advantages of being a more widely used approach, giving greater interchangeability with other users. LyX is more instantly usable but a helpful LaTeX editor like TeXnicCenter or even Emacs (if you like that sort of thing) closes the gap a bit.

Download size: Depends on the system and whether all the supporting applications and libraries (like teTeX) are already in place.

OpenGEM is a complete 16-bit DOS-era desktop still in development. Comes with all sorts of applications including mp3 player, DTP program, word processor and various drawing programs and a developer's kit.

Lotus Agenda: Still one of the best PIMs available. Now a free download direct from Lotus.

TDE is the best console editor for Windows or DOS. Powerful, easy to get started in but infinitely extendable. Can be compiled on Linux/Unix. Has an active developer and is always getting even better.