> centos 6.8 comes with python 2.6. But I want to use python 2.7 to > build gstreamer sdk. I have built python 2.7 and installed it into my > custom directory. How to set centos to use python 2.7 by default > instead of python 2.6? You could have used python virtualenv. I'm not a python dev and only have vague memories and some short notes on the subject. FYI I have all my python 2.7 packages installed from PUIAS_6_computational repo which had a better selection of python packages at the time: python27-2.7.8 python27-virtualenv-1.10.1 ... When you have python27-virtualenv package you can create and activate a virtual environment with the following commands: $ mkdir ~/opt/python27 $ virtualenv-2.7 ~/opt/python27 $ . ~/opt/python27/bin/activate (python27) prefix will be added to the shell prompt and all subsequent python calls will use version from the virtual environment. (python27) $ python --version Python 2.7.8 ... (python27) $ deactivate HTH