I've heard ubuntu 9.4 will but it's still in alpha. Are there any stable distros that come with python 2.6 or at least don't depend on it so much so reinstalling python won't break anything?
Distrowatch will prob be your best place to look it has lots of details comparing different distros.
Karl
You can install python 2.6 in Ubuntu 8.10 just fine.
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make altinstall --prefix=/usr/local
Then just run python with:
python2.6
If you want to use it in a shebang line, just use:
#!/usr/bin/env python2.6
Your scripts will still work when Jaunty 9.04 is around with native python2.6.
Python 2.6.5 is available in Fedora Rawhide, but Rawhide is the development branch, so that probably doesn't fit your description of "stable" (despite being remarkably stable). It doesn't seem to have made it into Fedora 10 yet, and I don't know if it will or not. It will be in Fedora 11 for sure -- you can get a prerelease of it already, which should be more stable than Rawhide. Alternately, you should be able to grab the package from the prerelease or Rawhide and install it under Fedora 10 without issue, I think.
For what it's worth, Python 2.6 is available in the Portage tree for Gentoo, but it's hardmasked (that doesn't really count as stable) because apparently there are some programs that don't work with it. My guess is that if you had Gentoo, you could install Python 2.6 and get it to work, but it might not be smart to make it the default version (i.e. you'd want to keep Python 2.5 around as well).