If memory serves, RH ver. 8 was a bust. Nobody liked it. In fact they never even bothered to go to 8.1. They dumped it altogether and went straight to 9.0. They went totally Enterprise after that and left the free product to fedora. If you would like the latest RHEL version but don't have the bucks, you might want to look into CentOS. It is RHEL with all the branding and graphics removed. It also is not supported by Red Hat itself but the folks at CentOS try to keep you very up to date on any updates that Red Hat has.