Performance improvements in Python 3.8 in RHEL 8.2 Python 3.8 The Python interpreter shipped in RHEL 8 is version 3.6, which was released back in 2016. While Red Hat is committed to support it for the lifetime of RHEL 8, it is becoming a bit old for some use cases. For those who need new Python features (and can live with the inevitable compatibility-breaking changes), RHEL 8.2 comes with Python 3.8. See the release notes for the new python38 module. The python38 package joins the company of Python interepreters shipped in RHEL 8.2, alongside python2 and python3 packages, which we described in our earlier post, Python in RHEL 8. It is installable alongside the other Python interpreters, so it doesn't interfere with the existing Python stack.