Download and install Python on RHEL

Download and install Python 2.7.3

# wget http://python.org/ftp/python/2.7.3/Python-2.7.3.tar.bz2
# tar xf Python-2.7.3.tar.bz2
# cd Python-2.7.3
# ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
# make && make altinstall

Download and install Python 3.3.0

# wget http://python.org/ftp/python/3.3.0/Python-3.3.0.tar.bz2 # tar xf Python-3.3.0.tar.bz2 # cd Python-3.3.0 # ./configure --prefix=/usr/local # make && make altinstall

Download and install Distribute

Distribute provides a framework for installing packages from the Python Package Index. Each Python interpreter on your system needs its own install of Distribute.
You can find out what the latest version of Distribute is here. At the time of this edit the current version is 0.6.35. Replace the version number below if there is a newer version available.

Download and install Distribute for Python 3.3

# wget http://pypi.python.org/packages/source/d/distribute/distribute-0.6.35.tar.gz
# tar xf distribute-0.6.35.tar.gz
# cd distribute-0.6.35
# python3.3 setup.py install