Free

LyX

The developers of LyX call it, not a word processor, but a document processor. LyX is designed to combine the ease of a graphical interface with the power of the renowned TeX typesetting system. If flashy presentation is not a high priority, but quality typesetting is a must, LyX may be just what you need.

Visit the LyX home page

Maxwell

Maxwell was originally intended to be a proprietary product, but that plan was abandoned and, to make a long story short, the developers eventually decided to release the program under the GPL. Of the three free programs, Maxwell most closely resembles the commercial products you're probably accustomed to.

Visit The Maxwell Homepage

Pathetic Writer

Part of the Siag Office suite, which also includes the Siag spreadsheet and Egon Animator. With names like these, and the slogan "It sucks less!" this suite has clearly never been near a marketing department.

Pathetic Writer is really not pathetic, though. It has limited formatting capabilities, but is fairly stable and has a friendly interface. The creator of Siag Office makes good use of external utilities (think "plug-ins") to extend the suite's functionality without program bloat.

One caution is in order, however. I've found Siag rather hard to set up in the beginning. There's a good chance you'll need to compile it from the source code.

More info about Siag Office

Next: Proprietary Word Processors