@MIkeL  The best technical reference before you embark on deploying your cluster is to check the compatibility of the different moving parts of HDP/Cloudera binaries against an operating system of your choice, the first source of truth is please filter all the possible valid options using   supportmatrix cloudera/hortonworks tool Hortonworks and Cloudera do run exhaustive tests on a particular Operating system before certifying it as production-ready and from the about  RHEL/Centos 7.7 are not yet certified so I highly doubt whether  RHEL/Centos 8  is certified that explains the Python errors you are encountering. HTH ... View more