Glad to know that your hard drive installation went well.

Well getting a free copy of linux without downloading anything is pretty easy...
1. You can get the UBUNTU CD shipped to you for free (however this might take a while though...)
2. Get a friend to download it for you (recommended )
3. Look around for places like linux caffe near your house. I went down there once, just to take a look and although I didn't ask them for a Ubuntu CD, I'm guessing they have them.

Or you can try stuff like damn small linux or puppy linux, if you want to use linux... but they won't be as good as a real actual distro of linux. And the distro of linux depends on you, some people find installing Ubuntu and using it easy, while others prefer something like slackware and say it is more robust.

Or if you have access to something like WinRAR at your workplace, you can try this:
1. Download the ISO
2. Then create an archive, however while creating the archive, split the archive into two pieces so it can fit into your USB. Or just RARing it might do the trick for you.
3. Bring it home... one by one and then extract it to form 1 file.

Kinda tedious if you ask me, but might be worth it.