Microsoft Works was discontinued many years ago. It's problematic to run at times even on Windows 7 due to bugs.
No it's not like that man. I don't mind libre I've even used it myself from time to time with decent results.
You're married right? What program does your wife use to type up documents? Try installing Open Office on her pc for week and see how it goes....then try installing it on your mom's pc and see how it goes.
My mum has been using LibreOffice for about ten years, before that it was MSO.
LibreOffice can read most Works WP/spreadsheet docs. I've encountered a few Works docs (maybe created in really ancient versions like 4.0 for Win95) that LO couldn't open. Frankly if someone's needs are so minimal that they've been working with Works, then LO is an improvement by every metric: It's kept up-to-date, it can generally read and write MSOffice documents without being a massive pain, they can send documents to other people without having to hop through crazy hoops (once the default save file types are changed to MSO doctypes) and it has far more features.
For one customer who had been using Works, I suggested LO on their replacement computer, then they panicked when they saw more toolbar buttons than they were used to. I customised the LO toolbars to match Works's feature-for-feature. Panic over.
If the user was super elderly and never used WP/spreadsheets in any way except to write their own stuff and print it, I'd consider using the install files I have for Works SE9 and save them the pain in getting used to new software. For everyone else, they get LO or MSO, because being able to receive and open a doc is pretty much a given for almost everyone these days.
IMO it goes something like this in the event of a user getting a new PC:
MSO: If they already own it, and it's 2007 or newer, no problem.
LO: If they don't own MSO or it's older than 2007, then LO is likely to cause less problems.
Works: For people who consider the Internet a thing to be avoided at almost all costs and just want to type their own stuff and print it. <- Even then, still sometimes problematic on newer versions of Windows.
I'd say I probably have as many customers with LO installed as MSO, give or take ten percent.
One thing I would strongly suggest is to stick to the 'stable' release of LO though (currently 5.4.x). The 'fresh' release can have weird regressions in.