As you get used to using Linux, you will find yourself using Windows less and less until you are effectvely using Linux as your principle operating system and using Windows rarely if at all. And check out http://www.openoffice.org for an Office suite. (Disclaimer: haven't tried it myself yet -- need to upgrade the Linux box so I have space for it) A colleague is using it, though, and submits Word-format docs to our committee; they seem fine, though he admits the most complex stuff doesn't go.
I use Abiword which can import Microsoft Word (modified RTF) documents and can save to RTF format which can be used by Midrosoft Word.