fedora is free/gratis as well as free/libre.
http://www.fedorafaq.org
To give you an idea: fedora continues the redhat linux development line - with FC1 being RH10 ... now we are at f11, which would be RH20. Your RH9 books are about as useful as a DOS6 manual. GNU/Linux has changed quite a bit since then.
For the record - almost all gnu/linux distros are free of charge. Even the commercial ones have licenses (just like EULAs only on
your side) which allow unlimited copying and distribution of the bulk of the software
Note: the site I linked to also has a link to redhats ftp site.
The ftp site has a directory tree you hae to navigate.
One of the branches is for i386 ...
ftp://archive.download.redhat.com/pu...9/en/iso/i386/
there are three CD isos (RH9 is also called "shrike") there. The srpm isos contain source code. But you are still better off with a modern distro.