I'm also an academic. I use Scrivener, then pop it into LaTeX. Scrivener has a non-commercial version for Linux. It's not fully featured, but it still does a go

I'm also an academic. I use Scrivener, then pop it into LaTeX. Scrivener has a non-commercial version for Linux. It's not fully featured, but it still does a good job. You have to download it from their forum: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=33&sid=40d9c854a6f68a5b81399c30098eec7f http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=33&s... Learning LaTeX is absolutely worth the time and effort. I realize it's not the easiest thing to learn, but it's invaluable for keeping track of citations, simple typesetting, and rendering equations. It is not, however, worth using for making slideshows or posters.