Установка:

[-hide-] cd /usr/local/src/
wget http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.6.6/Python-2.6.6.tgz
tar xvfz Python-2.6.6.tgz
cd Python-2.6.6


Устанавливаем

./configure --prefix=/usr/lib/python2.6 --with-threads --enable-shared
make && make install

Когфигурим ld ,чтобы найти нужные либы

ln -s /usr/lib/python2.6/bin/python /usr/bin/python2.6
echo "/usr/lib/python2.6/lib" >> /etc/ld.so.conf.d/opt-python2.6.conf
ldconfig

Проверяем

python2.6

Получим результат:

root@testserver [~]# python2.6
Python 2.6.6 (r266:84292, Apr 23 2011, 19:11:41)
[GCC 4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-50)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> [-hide-]