diff --git a/package/python-kiwi-spec-template b/package/python-kiwi-spec-template
index aeaf11dd..83630ceb 100644
--- a/package/python-kiwi-spec-template
+++ b/package/python-kiwi-spec-template
@@ -92,7 +92,7 @@ Requires:       python%{python3_pkgversion}-docopt
 Requires:       python%{python3_pkgversion}-lxml
 Requires:       python%{python3_pkgversion}-requests
 Requires:       python%{python3_pkgversion}-setuptools
-%if 0%{?suse_version}
+%if (0%{?suse_version} && 0%{?suse_version} < 1550)
 Requires:       python%{python3_pkgversion}-xattr
 %else
 Requires:       python%{python3_pkgversion}-pyxattr
@@ -355,6 +355,11 @@ Provides manual pages to describe the kiwi commands
 # as an independent script
 sed -e "s|#!/usr/bin/env python||" -i kiwi/xml_parse.py
 
+%if 0%{?suse_version} && 0%{?suse_version} < 1550
+# For older SUSE distributions, use the other xattr Python module
+sed -e "s|pyxattr|xattr|" -i setup.py
+%endif
+
 %build
 # Build Python 3 version
 python3 setup.py build --cflags="${RPM_OPT_FLAGS}"
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 3c75a274..034e3b7d 100755
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -186,7 +186,7 @@ config = {
     'install_requires': [
         'docopt>=0.6.2',
         'lxml',
-        'xattr',
+        'pyxattr',
         'requests',
         'PyYAML'
     ],