I don't know whether you've ever played around with the Linux operating system, but its been around for a bit longer than you may think. In the early 1990's the idea of a Linux 'distribution' was very rare and anyone who wanted to install Linux usually had to get their hands dirty and the process of getting Linux up and running was a long-winded sometimes painfull task. 

Then along came the Owen LeBlanc who provided the world with the first real Linux distribution to make our lives easier. This distribution was called the 'MCC Interim Distribution', and consisted of a boot and root floppy disk set along with several other floppies for optional packages. Some of these distributions are still available online on various FTP sites around the world, but the odds are that PC's of that era have long been assigned to the scrap heap.

To get one installed on modern hardware might cause problems, which is where QEMU comes in.  QEMU is a software emulator of various types of PC hardware and provides a way of testing these older versions of Linux.

In the 'History' section of the ManLUG website you'l find some QEMU disc images of several versions of the MCC Interim Linux distribution.