welcome nutter...
Well you failed the initiation test then :o)
I note that dead rat 5.2 is a tad old (I started with it back in '98) I'm sure that if you give someone your address they can send you a Debian CD.
aarrgghh nnoooo somebody send him a redhat 7.1 CD ;).. oh, just to upset all the apt evangelists, have you seen somebody has writen apt-rpm !!..
Sz