Getting a newer Python on RHEL without touching the system python3

python - 2026-09-29

RHEL (and Rocky/Alma/CentOS Stream) ties /usr/bin/python3 to whatever version the OS release shipped with. dnf and a bunch of system tooling depend on that exact interpreter, so replacing it is how you break dnf on the next update. uv, a Python package and project manager from Astral, sidesteps the whole problem: it downloads its own standalone Python builds into your home directory, completely separate from anything RPM-managed. Based on this Fedora Magazine writeup. It was written for Fedora, but nothing in it is Fedora-specific, since uv doesn't install RPMs. Checked with uv 0.11.

Install uv itself

On RHEL there's no guaranteed uv package in the default repos (unlike Fedora, which has one). The official installer script works the same everywhere and doesn't need root:

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

It puts uv in ~/.local/bin, which RHEL's default ~/.bashrc already adds to PATH.

Install a newer Python, alongside the system one

uv python install 3.13

The interpreter itself lands under ~/.local/share/uv/python/cpython-3.13…/, nowhere near /usr/bin/python3. uv also adds one versioned command, ~/.local/bin/python3.13, so python3.13 works straight away. python3 and python are left alone: which python3 still answers /usr/bin/python3.

Use it, without making it "the" python3

A venv (virtual environment) is a project directory with its own interpreter and packages, isolated from the system ones:

uv venv --python 3.13          # a .venv/ for this project, built on 3.13
uv run --python 3.13 script.py # run one script against 3.13 directly

Both work whatever python3 on PATH points to, because you name the interpreter explicitly. Starting an Ansible role project with uv uses the same uv venv for ansible-core.

If you want `python3` itself to be the new one

uv python install 3.13 --default

This also adds unversioned python3 and python commands to ~/.local/bin. Since that directory comes before /usr/bin in your PATH, they win in your own shells. /usr/bin/python3 is untouched, and so are dnf and anything else that calls it by full path. uv won't overwrite a python3 in ~/.local/bin that it didn't create either: it warns "Executable already exists … but is not managed by uv; use --force to replace it" and leaves the file in place.

Older uv releases marked --default as experimental and needed --preview; uv 0.11 doesn't.

Sources

The uv docs and uv python install --help. The behaviour above was checked with uv 0.11.21: the versioned python3.13 in ~/.local/bin, --default adding python3, and the refusal to replace an unmanaged python3.
RHEL's default ~/.bashrc (dot-bashrc in the CentOS Stream 9 and 10 bash package) prepends ~/.local/bin and ~/bin to PATH.