ok - there's a big difference between
a) red hat
and...
b) linux
linux itself is the kernel of the linux operating system - the single most basic program at the core of all that is linux. linux itself, the actual kernel, is in version 2.4.12 at the moment. you have kernel 2.4.2.2, which was released a few months ago, making yours a relatively new kernel release. depending on how the main developers are feeling, a new release is put out every month or so, or in some cases, every other day, going from 2.4.0 to 2.4.1 to 2.4.2... ect.
anyway, red hat is a distribution of the linux operating system. the kernel by itself doesn't really do anything useful. it just provides the subsystems for all other programs. red hat is a company that puts together some useful configuration programs and other useful stuff, like word processors and tetris games, and includes those, along with the linux kernel of their choice, with the cd's that they sell. so, red hat 7.1 uses kernel 2.4.2.2.
if you ever want to check the kernel version, at the prompt, type:
uname -r
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