I've been using LibreOffice since StarOffice 5.2 (which had its own taskbar). It really is amazing. The best trick in Writer is to use the "Styles" sidebar and

I've been using LibreOffice since StarOffice 5.2 (which had its own taskbar). It really is amazing. The best trick in Writer is to use the "Styles" sidebar and apply document-wide styles to the document like you would in CSS. This makes layout in large documents a breeze. If you don't like the UI, there's "View > User Interface..." where you get to choose between 7 different UI layouts.