Preferred way to install multiple python versions on Ubuntu Jaunty
Solution 1:
You should be able to install 2.4, 2.5, 2.6 and/or 3.0 from the repositories using Synaptic Package Manager or apt-get or aptitude then use update-alternatives to set up a default. See my answer here for information on using update-alternatives (the answer is even specific to Python).
Solution 2:
Installing multiple versions of Python on Ubuntu from Source