CentOS 6.4 ships with Python 2.6.6 and yum and serval utilities depend on this version.

To install Python 3.3.1 without touching the system version of Python:

# yum groupinstall "Development tools"
# wget http://python.org/ftp/python/3.3.1/Python-3.3.1.tar.bz2
# tar xf Python-3.3.1.tar.bz2
# cd  Python-3.3.1
# ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
# make && make altinstall

# ls -l /usr/local/bin/python3.3


# Get distribute 0.6.3.6 from https://pypi.python.org/pypi/distribute
# easy_install virtualenv


Create python 2.6 virtualenv

# virtualenv -p /usr/bin/python py2.6env
source py2.6env/bin/activate


Create python 3.3 virtualenv

# virtualenv -p /usr/local/bin/python3.3 py3.3env
source py3.3env/bin/activate