diff --git a/elements/centos-minimal/environment.d/10-centos-distro-name.bash b/elements/centos-minimal/environment.d/10-centos-distro-name.bash
index 501df444d..39449b156 100644
--- a/elements/centos-minimal/environment.d/10-centos-distro-name.bash
+++ b/elements/centos-minimal/environment.d/10-centos-distro-name.bash
@@ -4,6 +4,3 @@ export DIB_RELEASE=${DIB_RELEASE:-7}
 # by default, enable DHCP configuration of eth0 & eth1 in network
 # scripts.  See yum-minimal for full details
 export DIB_YUM_MINIMAL_CREATE_INTERFACES=${DIB_YUM_MINIMAL_CREATE_INTERFACES:-1}
-
-# Useful for elements that work with fedora (dnf) & centos
-export YUM=${YUM:-yum}
diff --git a/elements/pip-and-virtualenv/install.d/pip-and-virtualenv-source-install/01-install-pip b/elements/pip-and-virtualenv/install.d/pip-and-virtualenv-source-install/01-install-pip
index 4efd1a213..31804aab4 100755
--- a/elements/pip-and-virtualenv/install.d/pip-and-virtualenv-source-install/01-install-pip
+++ b/elements/pip-and-virtualenv/install.d/pip-and-virtualenv-source-install/01-install-pip
@@ -6,50 +6,5 @@ fi
 set -eu
 set -o pipefail
 
-if [[ $DISTRO_NAME =~ (centos|fedora) ]]; then
-    # GENERAL WARNING : mixing packaged python libraries with
-    # pip-installed versions always creates issues.  Upstream
-    # openstack-infra uses this a lot (especially devstack) but be
-    # warned: here be dragons :)
-
-    # Firstly we want to install the system packages.  Otherwise later
-    # on somebody does a "yum install python-virtualenv" and goes and
-    # overwrites the pip installed version with the packaged version,
-    # leading to all sorts of weird version issues.
-    ${YUM:-yum} install -y python-virtualenv python-pip python-setuptools
-
-    # install pip; this overwrites packaged pip
-    python /tmp/get-pip.py
-
-    # pip and setuptools are closely related; we want to ensure the
-    # latest for sanity.  Because distro packages don't include enough
-    # info in the egg for pip to be certain it has fully uninstalled
-    # the old package, for safety we clear it out by hand (this seems
-    # to have been a problem with very old to new updates,
-    # e.g. centos6 to current-era, but less so for smaller jumps).
-    # There is a bit of chicken-and-egg problem with pip in that it
-    # requires setuptools for some operations, such as wheel creation.
-    # But just installing setuptools shouldn't require setuptools
-    # itself, so we are safe for this small section.
-    rm -rf /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/setuptools*
-    pip install -U setuptools
-
-    # now install latest virtualenv.  it vendors stuff it needs so
-    # doesn't have issues with other system packages.
-    pip install -U virtualenv
-
-    # Add this to exclude so that we don't install a later package
-    # over it if it updates.  Note that fedora-minimal, bootstrapped
-    # via yum, can have an old yum.conf around, so look for dnf first.
-    if [[ -f /etc/dnf/dnf.conf ]]; then
-        conf=/etc/dnf/dnf.conf
-    elif [[ -f /etc/yum.conf ]]; then
-        conf=/etc/yum.conf
-    else
-        die "No conf to modify?"
-    fi
-    echo "exclude=python-virtualenv,python-pip,python-setuptools" >> ${conf}
-else
-    python /tmp/get-pip.py
-    pip install virtualenv
-fi
+python /tmp/get-pip.py
+pip install virtualenv