Comment by montecarl

In order for a wheel to be used instead of a source distribution there needs to be one that matches your environment. For numpy you can take a look at the wheels for their latest release[1]. The filename of a wheel specifies where it can be used. Let's take an example:

numpy-1.25.2-cp39-cp39-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl

This specifies cpython 3.9, linux, glibc 2.17 or higher, and x86_64 cpu. Looking through the list you will see that the oldest cpython supported is 3.9. So if you are running with an older version of python you will have to build from source.

I just learned a bit more about this recently because I could not figure out why PyQt6 would not install on my computer. It turned out my glibc was too old. Finally upgraded from Ubuntu 18.04.

[1] https://pypi.org/project/numpy/1.25.2/#files