Is pages Apples own word processor? I was thinking about buying Office 2016, I have always used Office with Windows and Mac. My last Macbook, the 2008 13" white Macbook I used Office 2008 and tried to install it on this MBP but I found out that it was only compatible with Yosemite and in El Capitan I would get a message "cannot install because there is no software to install" I have always known of Open Office since it's beginnings but never used it. Is it better to use Pages or is Open Office worth the download?
As others have said, LibreOffice is the more "actively supported" version of Open Office.
Since LibreOffice is free, I recommend downloading it and trying it out to see how well it will work for you. I use iWork, MS Office, and LibreOffice depending upon the task. I've added an MS Office 2013 theme to LibreOffice so that it looks familiar.
As to which one(s) will be the best for you really depends upon what you'll be doing. If you need to exchange MS Office documents with others, then the only choice is MS Office. LibreOffice does a fine job with most MS Office documents, but if there is any funky formatting, LibreOffice will clobber it. It is even worse with Pages.
Each of these productivity suites have their own "workflow paradigm". In order to use any of them effectively, you need to invest the time in learning how the flow goes and adjust accordingly.
In order of preference, I prefer
iWork '09 (which still works under El Cap OSX) because it has a lot more functionality than the newer version(though I use the newer version for document exchange between MBA/iMac/iPadPro), followed by
LibreOffice (for the increased functionality over iWork without significantly more complex UI), and lastly
MS Office.