I got pissed off at Windows for the last time and ordered Mandrake Linux 7.2--and now that I've made the decision, I'm impatient to get the switch over and done with; Is it worth my while to install RedHat 5.0 while I wait? Will Mandrake overwrite it OK?

Well, you might want to wait. RedHat 5.0 is kind of outdated, well in terms of drivers and such. What kind of hardware or computer do you have? RH 5.0 might not have anything that is supported if your computer is fairly new.
I would wait, only have to deal with windows for a while longer.
If you do go ahead and install RH, Mandrake would install easily over RH, just like installing RH over Windows.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Linux. As trickykid said, Red Hat 5 is outdated. I am running Red Hat 7 currently. If you want to get more recent versions, go to http://www.linuxcentral.com and order there combined pack. There are like 6 different flavors for you to chose from and they only cost $17. Well worth the investment.

I managed to snag Corel Linux; at least it's not outdated. I think you misunderstood me; I already ordered Mandrake 7.2, but, commitment made, I didn't want to wait for the posties to bring my CDs.

The whole question turned out to be made obsolete by the fact that someone my old man worked with was a Linux enthusiast and lent me his Corel Linux CD just to get someone else hooked.

I'm hoping that Mandrake is better than Corel Linux, though; I can't get into any color depths above 65536, and it seems to randomly warm-boot on me. (Once, when I opened a helpfile in Netscape, and a second time, when I tried to open a .tar.gz archive; After the second time, I restarted Linux and tried again, and it worked fine; That's why I'm so sure I didn't do anything to <i>cause</i> the warm-boots)