Fedora: Dual Python Versions Installed System Not Picking Up Newer Version

[*nixtechno]

I have a fedora box and just installed python 2.6.1 along with 2.5.2,
so here's my issue, if I removed the "systems" garbage RPM it would
uninstall all the other crap along with it, so I went ahead and
trunked in and ./configure, build && build install and built python
2.6.1 along with this. However how can I stipulate that I want the
WHOLE system to use Python 2.6.1 rather than 2.5.2? I know there is
something to do with PATH, which I tried under my /root/.cshrc file,
but to no avail it didn't work. So is there something special I should
do with getting the system to pick up this directy:

/usr/local/lib/python2.6/

Which the v2.6 binary is in:

/usr/local/bin/python.2.6

Rather than this:

/usr/lib64/python2.5/

Which the v2.5 binary is in:

/usr/bin/python

Perhaps it's Fedora not picking it up?

Here's my server's build:
# uname -rm
2.6.27.19-170.2.35.fc10.x86_64 x86_64

I've gone through and tried to figure it out, to no avail, so if
anyone is pretty familiar with this, because I do NOT want to
stipulate which binary to use in all my source files...