Yes your right, there is a lot of ignorance out there in "Specialist" Computer shops and IT departments
Office Compatability is handled quite well by several Office clones in Linux (Staroffice etc) but none of these are truly 100% compatable.
There is a very promising one comming to Linux soon (GoBe Productive) this is not free (however it is a LOT cheaper than Office and with a far more flexable licensing agreement), sadly again not 100% compatable, but very close
Another alternative is to try running MS Office under Linux, see here
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,92043,00.asp
That kind of defeats the point if you are trying to run away from the world of MS, but by the sounds of your mail that is not your objective, you just want to learn more about an alternative system, Right ?
There are a few good books on Linux, I personally go for the O'Reilly ones myself. Reading is one thing but the best way is to install it and have a play, maybe referring to books or on-line documentation when you get stuck.
It really is a lot easier to grasp now, than a few years ago, there are some very good distributions out there.
Regards
Wayne