Install Python from Source for CentOS 6

.bash_profile

# User specific environment and startup programs

export PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$HOME/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

export VIRTUAL_ENV_DISABLE_PROMPT=1
source $HOME/.python-venv/bin/activate

install_python_centos.sh

sudo yum -y install giflib-devel libXpm-devel libtiff-devel libjpeg-devel expat-devel 
sudo yum -y install gcc gdbm-devel readline-devel ncurses-devel libpng-devel 
sudo yum -y install zlib-devel bzip2-develsqlite-devel db4-devel tk-devel wget
sudo yum -y install bluez-libs-devel make perl-devel curl-devel openssl-devel
sudo yum -y groupinstall "Development Tools"
mkdir -p src/python
cd src/python
wget http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.7.6/Python-2.7.6.tgz
tar zxf Python-2.7.6.tgz 
cd Python-2.7.6/
./configure --prefix=$HOME --with-threads --enable-shared
make -j8
make install
cd src/python
wget https://bitbucket.org/pypa/setuptools/raw/bootstrap/ez_setup.py
python ez_setup.py
easy_install pip
pip install virtualenv
virtualenv $HOME/.python-venv