Ah, it's not the best for cases like that, especially if you need to make different layouts all the time. You can get it to do anything with enough packages and positioning hints, but at some point it becomes too much of a chore. If you just need a dozen of layouts and then fill them out with different content, it's doable.

For snazzy layouts for publishing and stuff, you might want to give Scribus a try! It's like an alternative to Microsoft's "Publisher."

https://www.scribus.net/

I would not use latex for any document that should be a template for other people to fill in. Unless you're a peer reviewed journal.

I wouldn't use latex for anything that requires precise positioning of images and elements. InDesign and similar are a much better option.

I do like to use markdown for any document that does not fall into those categories. I like to use latex for any document I'm writing which I want someone else to style.

Latex is very cool for styling, but in my experience most of the time you do not really need that amount of configurability and the added time to correctly make a styled document in latex is way more than what it would take you in word, even when you have to fight word to make it. That is unless you need equations, but then again: just write markdown with latex equations.

You cannot control where pictures occur within a text body in latex, it decides for you. You can give it recommendations, but it’ll figure out the final alignment when rendering to page. I’m not sure that’s a limitation you want for design-focused use cases.

And if you want to do something seriously nice you need to code a it in latex’s reverse Polish notation code language from hell, let me tell you latex ain’t the future of ease haha

Well, I surprised myself by making it through the first video, at least. It was interesting to hear the guy ripping on the "hide the menus" concept as hard as I've always done. That shit drove me berserk when it came out.

Old word for macOS had the best UI in my opinion, it was like Photoshop, where the functions where in a separate floating window on the side.

That makes totally sense, since word is normally used with paper being portraits oriented while screens a normally landscaped.
Gives much more screen estate and doesn’t reduce hight which is limited anyway.

Circular dependency issue

What, the paragraph symbol? I'll add that to the list of useless words to pull out in strange situations just to show off to people I know them.

Now I'd probably go for typst.

So my oldest is almost to the point where I’m going to want them to have something for schoolwork and writing. They use a classroom Chromebook at school, but I have no idea what would make sense for them here at home. I’m an engineer who daily drives Linux, so I’m probably overthinking it. I do have an old laptop that will easily handle a lightweight distro, and as long as I don’t give them sudo it will probably be ok? Though I haven’t looked at parental controls for Linux accounts.

What do you recommend?

Unlucky I'd say.

I haven't touched Word in almost a decade because I've been fortunate to work in companies that don't pay for Microsoft suite, instead using Google suite. And I'll tell you, not only I need to use it very very little but also it's much easier to get things done than Microsoft products.

What do I use daily? Slack and confluence. But we don't need to talk about those, do we?

Gen alpha beta whatever will need those Microsoft skills when they enter workforce in corporations full of genz, because that's pervasive cyber tools in those pieces. You can talk all you want about libre Office, but that's not what man child ceo of big companies do, because they're affairs of their man child friends peer pressure. Hive mentality.

I'd like your take on Slide Deck vs PowerPoint :)