free alternatives to microsoft word on mac?

Hi everyone, I just got my first mac and I love it. Quick question, though...are there any free alternatives to microsoft word? I had openoffice on my PC, and I tried downloading it here but it said I needed something called X11(I have no clue what it is-if you do, please share!)

If anyone can give me alternatives, or how to install openoffice, that would be great. Thanks!

You can get x11 from the Mac website if you want, or you can also try this. Download Neooffice, it is the Mac version of Open Office and you don't need x11 for it. Works very well for most people and like Open Office it is free.

Yep, like James says, NeoOffice works without you having to install X11.

It is also developed with more regularity than OpenOffice. At least, OpenOffice had a development hiatus of 18 months: the last version is very recent.

Unfortunately Neooffice only has more development activity because it is playing catch-up with OpenOffice. To get the full OO 2.1 feature set you have to be running the beta which does have some issues.

If you're running a new mac (i.e. with 10.4 Tiger) you can install X11 from the first installation disk by clicking on the optional extras. You can then install OpenOffice and it will look and feel exactly like it does on Windows and Linux.

If you are just looking for a good free alternative to MS-Word, not the whole office suite, look no farther than Abiword (www.abisource.com). It is excellent, it is free, and it is F-A-S-T!

James said:

You can get x11 from the Mac website if you want, or you can also try this. Download Neooffice, it is the Mac version of Open Office and you don't need x11 for it. Works very well for most people and like Open Office it is free.

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It might be helpful to note that X11 can also be installed from your OS X install disc. It's pretty helpful to have if you intend to run many Open Source applications that haven't been designed to run specifically on the Mac.

This is true cwa107, but the great thing about Abiword is that they have a native Mac OS X version - no X11 needed. You can get it right here:

http://www.abisource.com/download/

Abiword is the word processing part of Gnome Office. gnumeric is the spreadsheet part. I can't wait until they do the native Mac OS X port of gnumeric as well. Then we will have 100% Microsoft free word processing and spreadsheet options that are still compatible with the Microsoft using world.

And if you need to install X11 you'll locate it at:

Mac OS X Install Disc 1>System>Installation>Packages>X11User.pkg

Here you will find the most popular office suites for Macs and there limitations.