Installing Python 2 on Linux — The Hitchhiker's Guide to Python (original) (raw)

The latest versions of CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Ubuntucome with Python 2.7 out of the box.

To see which version of Python you have installed, open a command prompt and run

However, with the growing popularity of Python 3, some distributions, such as Fedora, don’t come with Python 2 pre-installed. You can install the python2package with your distribution package manager:

$ sudo dnf install python2

You do not need to install or configure anything else to use Python. Having said that, I would strongly recommend that you install the tools and libraries described in the next section before you start building Python applications for real-world use. In particular, you should always install Setuptools and pip, as it makes it much easier for you to use other third-party Python libraries.

Virtual Environments¶

A Virtual Environment is a tool to keep the dependencies required by different projects in separate places, by creating virtual Python environments for them. It solves the “Project X depends on version 1.x but, Project Y needs 4.x” dilemma, and keeps your global site-packages directory clean and manageable.

For example, you can work on a project which requires Django 1.10 while also maintaining a project which requires Django 1.8.

To start using this and see more information: Virtual Environments docs.

You can also use virtualenvwrapper to make it easier to manage your virtual environments.

This page is a remixed version of another guide, which is available under the same license.