Should I learn to use LaTeX to write up a History Masters Thesis?

So I reviewed the "What are the advantages or disadvantages of using LaTeX for writing scientific publications?" question on this forum and am sitting on the fence at the moment whether or not to use LaTeX to write up my masters Thesis.

I get the feeling that it is best suited for Scientific work but my MLitt is in History. I have searched my university website about LaTeX and most results come back from the maths department.

I am a part-time research student so my thesis with be approx. 50,000 words. At the moment I am using Libreoffice (I'm a Linux user -Ubuntu distro) to write up each chapter as a separate document which I was going to bring into a master theses document. I am using Mendeley to manage all my footnotes and bibliography.

I'm going to be meeting my supervisor over the next couple of weeks and would like to discuss the matter with him as to if I should/can use LaTeX. I'm sure how familiarity or usage of LaTeX within the History department will impact on my decision but would also like to prepare my thesis in the best possible way.

Edit 10/04/14: After a meeting with my Supervisor it appear that the History department has no preference on software for writing the thesis. Only requirement is that final thesis before defence is printed in ring-bound cover and the (hopefully!) accepted thesis is a hardback bound copy. My last written piece to my supervisor was done in LaTeX, using Texmaker on Ubuntu then exported to pdf, and other than some tweaking we need to do to the citation styling he was quite happy with the output. His advise was to use whatever software I was comfortable with (although he had never heard of LaTeX).

I would be grateful for answers from people who have used LaTeX in the Humanities area so as to be best prepared for my own decision on whether or not I would like to use it.

(Edit 10/03/2014) Just based on some of the answers, especially in relation to the learning curve with LaTeX, here is some more info that may be useful. Probably about 95% of my thesis will be text but I shall also need to insert some images (maps and photos) and will probably be entering some tables with stats. As stated above I use Mendeley for my refernece manager and have read some blogs where this is compatible with LaTeX so I think I would continue to us it if I go the LaTeX route.

Answer

I'm finishing up a PhD in philosophy that I've written in LaTeX. Here's some suggestions:

• make sure your advisor is ok with leaving you comments in pdf. I suspect he or she will not understand the question and will not be able to give you any feedback unless you submit chapters in word format. This is a deal breaker. Don't make any more problems communicating with your advisor than absolutely necessary.


• lots of academic journals in the humanities still don't accept submissions in pdf or latex source form. If you are planning on submitting your stuff to a journal, you might save yourself time writing in word format.


• there are some tools available to convert latex to rtf, html and other tools. texht is the best.


• If you do decide to go LaTeX, don't get lost in the minutiae of learning how to tweak everything. It's easy to lose lots of time learning new packages and stuff when you should be writing, writing, writing. Use the wikibooks latex guide as your quick start guide when you need to learn how to do something fast.


• Especially if you're on Ubuntu, don't get the LaTeX distributed through Canonical's repositories. It's usually out of date (haven't checked in a while). Just go on and get the vanilla TexLive 2013 distribution from CTAN.


• The tex.SE site is really, really good. Like ridiculously helpful.


• If you are familiar with version control programs like git, mercurial, or svn you can actually keep a very precise idea of exactly how your thesis has grown over time. You can roll back changes, etc. This is kind of advanced stuff for LaTeX, so I wouldn't spend like a lot of time learning this stuff if you aren't already familiar with it, but if you are, it can be really helpful. EDIT: Per @henry's comment below, see the following guide by Roger Dudler to get started with git.