This is a pretty dumb question, but is ubuntu dependent on Python 3.8? If it is not, how can I uninstall it from my system?
You can uninstall it after installing a python3* version as alternative. You have to install python3.9 available from Ubuntu repository.
sudo apt install python3.9
Here is how to set it as default before uninstalling python3.8.
Without a python3 installed the system will be unusable.
Python3 by default
Don't uninstall python3 in ubuntu as it is depended on many python packages if you delete that terminal, firefox browser,idle , will also delete and at last it will show you authentication error
The advantage of using apt autoremove is to remove Python along with its dependencies.
sudo apt autoremove python3 -y
For more information, check the answer given here.
I found the easiest way actually is to simply install the latest pip...
curl -sS https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py | python3.8
Take a look at this:
From #progmatico, it's not recommended that you uninstall builtins on Ubuntu such as Python. You can update Python, but it's not reccomended to uninstall. You can uninstall Python 2.x here, but unless you have Python 2 installed on your machine, this won't be much help. Unless ROM is tight(if not, I suggest the Raspberry Pi(switchable SD cards)), you don't need to have Python uninstalled.
In summary, you don't need to uninstall Python, it's a great coding language ;)
I'm trying to install an older version of tensorflow and it needs python3.6 to support the whl file of installation.
I'm now running Ubuntu 20.04 with python 3.8.5, I've already done this :
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa
followed by :
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python3.6
By doing that it installs python 3.6 but when I see the version of python installed it's still 3.8.5. Should I do something to remove python3.8.5 ? maybe apt-get purge ?
P.S: I'm installing the wheel file through pip3 should I downgrade it too ?
You shouldn't hack the system installation of Python I'd say.
Instead you should use something that let's you manage multiple versions of it, something like pyenv.
It is a well-known and widely accepted utility and according to its readme:
pyenv lets you easily switch between multiple versions of Python. It's simple, unobtrusive, and follows the UNIX tradition of single-purpose tools that do one thing well.
You can find the installation instructions here: https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv#basic-github-checkout.
Once you installed it you can install your preferred Python distribution which will live besides your system one and all the others you want later.
E.g. if you want to install 3.6.7 and then use it globally you can do:
pyenv install 3.6.7
pyenv global 3.6.7
Then test it like:
python -V
And that's only to scratch the surface, you can do many more things with it, check out the documentation for more.
after the commands you've run, you should have a python3.6 binary installed on the path
that said, I'd recommend using virtualenvs instead of system installations
for deadsnakes, you can install the venv module by (sudo) apt install python3.6-venv (debian decided to split venv into a separate module, so the deadsnakes packaging follows that)
from there you can create and activate a virtualenv:
python3.6 -m venv venv # create the environment
. venv/bin/activate # activate the environment
pip install ... # install things to your isolated environment
inside this virtualenv the python command will refer to your own isolated python installation
disclaimer: I'm the maintainer of deadsnakes
I would like to install the newest version of docutils via pip, but it can't figure out how to upgrade the system version installed via apt.
$ sudo --set-home python2 -m pip install --upgrade docutils
Collecting docutils
Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/3a/dc/bf2b15d1fa15a6f7a9e77a61b74ecbbae7258558fcda8ffc9a6638a6b327/docutils-0.15.2-py2-none-any.whl
Installing collected packages: docutils
Found existing installation: docutils 0.14
ERROR: Cannot uninstall 'docutils'. It is a distutils installed project and thus we cannot accurately determine which files belong to it which would lead to only a partial uninstall.
$ apt-cache show python-docutils | head -n 3
Package: python-docutils
Architecture: all
Version: 0.14+dfsg-3
None of the solutions I've thought of or found on the web appeal:
Delete the apt version with rm -rf /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/docutils*. This silences pip but means:
Installed files on the system no longer match what the Debian packaging system thinks
I might break dependencies of system software on docutils 0.14
Any updates to the Debian package will cause apt to reinstall
Other problems discussed in this answer
pip install --force-reinstall. (Same problems.)
pip install --ignore-install. (Same problems.)
Is there a way to get a default environment that works for me with the newest versions of stuff from pip but has no chance of breaking any system software? The same answer above suggests using one of virtualenv, venv, pyenv, pipenv. I tried pipenv and it doesn't want to install individual packages listed on the commandline using --system and I don't know whether creating a Pipfile will actually solve this problem.
I would rather not have to manually switch environments somehow to use the apt-installed packages versus the pip-installed packages. Is there a way to get only apt-installed software to use one environment and otherwise use the environment with the pip-installed stuff?
I would rather not have to manually switch environments somehow to use the apt-installed packages versus the pip-installed packages. Is there a way to get only apt-installed software to use one environment and otherwise use the environment with the pip-installed stuff?
Ideally, one should use either the system version or the pip version.
Per the Debian Python Policy,
As long as you don't install other versions of Python in your path, Debian's Python versions won't be affected by a new version.
If you install a different micro version of the version of Python you have got installed, you will need to be careful to install all the modules you use for that version of Python too.
So far adding the following to ~/.bashrc seems work well:
if [ ! -d ~/venv/python3 ]; then
python3 -m venv --system-site-packages ~/venv/python3
fi
if [ -d ~/venv/python3 ]; then
VIRTUAL_ENV_DISABLE_PROMPT=1 . ~/venv/python3/bin/activate
fi
Most of the system-installed scripts have one of the Pythons in /usr/bin hard-coded instead of using /usr/bin/env python so they are unaffected by this.
With Ubuntu, only certain Python versions are available from the repositories. They're easy to get, but with the rest, it's not so obvious. While I can certainly build them from source, I'm thinking there must be tools to automate the process but I can't find them.
Windows and OS X users can simply use executable installers available on the Python website. This is not true with the other OS options. If your Linux distribution's repositories do not contain all the versions you want, building from source is the recommended way, at least as far as the website is concerned.
Automating this process is possible. pythonbrew is a now-deprecated installation manager that recommends shell script-based pyenv instead. With this, installing a new version is as simple as
pyenv install <version number, e.g. 2.7.3>
Another alternative is the more Python-based (read: cross platform) pythonz, a fork of the original pythonbrew. It is just as easy:
pythonz install <version number, e.g. 2.7.3>
One way of installing multiple versions of Python in Ubuntu is to use Felix Krull's deadsnakes ppa, which includes all the major releases from 2.3 on (not point releases) if they are not already in the Ubuntu repositories. It only supports currently supported Ubuntu versions. There is no guarantee of updates, but it does make getting different versions easy.
To install the necessary repositories:
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fkrull/deadsnakes
$ sudo apt-get update
If you want to install 2.7, it's as easy as:
$ sudo apt-get install python2.7
Note this only works for Ubuntu, not e.g. Debian.
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa
$ sudo apt-get update
To install Python2.7, just enter:
$ sudo apt-get install python2.7
Is it this, which people seem to recommend most often:
$ sudo apt-get install python-setuptools
$ sudo easy_install pip
$ sudo pip install virtualenv
Or this, which I got from http://www.pip-installer.org/en/latest/installing.html:
$ curl -O https://github.com/pypa/virtualenv/raw/master/virtualenv.py
$ python virtualenv.py my_new_env
$ . my_new_env/bin/activate
(my_new_env)$ pip install ...
Or something entirely different?
If you can install the latest Python (2.7.9 and up) Pip is now bundled with it.
See: https://docs.python.org/2.7//installing/index.html
If not :
Update (from the release notes):
Beginning with v1.5.1, pip does not require setuptools prior to running get-pip.py. Additionally, if setuptools (or distribute) is not already installed, get-pip.py will install setuptools for you.
I now run the regular:
curl --silent --show-error --retry 5 https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py | sudo python
Here are the official installation instructions:
http://pip.readthedocs.org/en/latest/installing.html#install-pip
EDIT 25-Jul-2013:
Changed URL for setuptools install.
EDIT 10-Feb-2014:
Removed setuptools install (thanks #Ciantic)
EDIT 26-Jun-2014:
Updated URL again (thanks #LarsH)
EDIT 1-Mar-2015:
Pip is now bundled with Python
http://www.pip-installer.org/en/latest/installing.html is really the canonical answer to this question.
Specifically, the systemwide instructions are:
$ curl -O http://python-distribute.org/distribute_setup.py
$ python distribute_setup.py
$ curl -O https://raw.github.com/pypa/pip/master/contrib/get-pip.py
$ python get-pip.py
The section quoted in the question is the virtualenv instructions rather than the systemwide ones. The easy_install instructions have been around for longer, but it isn't necessary to do it that way any more.
This answer comes from #webology on Twitter:
$ sudo apt-get install python-setuptools
$ sudo easy_install pip
$ sudo pip install --upgrade pip virtualenv virtualenvwrapper
My added notes:
On Mac/Windows (and Linux if the apt repo is outdated) you'd replace the first step with downloading setuptools from http://pypi.python.org/pypi/setuptools
On Windows you'd have to omit virtualenvwrapper from the last step and install it manually somehow. I don't know if there's a way to do this without Cygwin, but I hope so.
On Ubuntu 12.04 I've had good luck just using the package manager:
sudo apt-get install python-pip virtualenvwrapper
There is no preferred method - everything depends on your needs. Often you need to have different Python interpreters on the system for whatever reason. In this case you need to install the stuff individually for each interpreter. Apart from that: I prefer installing stuff myself instead of depending of pre-packaged stuff sometimes causing issues - but that's only one possible opionion.
There really isn't a single "answer" to this question, but there are definitely some helpful concepts that can help you to come to a decision.
The first question that needs to be answered in your use case is "Do I want to use the system Python?" If you want to use the Python distributed with your operating system, then using the apt-get install method may be just fine. Depending on the operating system distribution method though, you still have to ask some more questions, such as "Do I want to install multiple versions of this package?" If the answer is yes, then it is probably not a good idea to use something like apt. Dpkg pretty much will just untar an archive at the root of the filesystem, so it is up to the package maintainer to make sure the package installs safely under very little assumptions. In the case of most debian packages, I would assume (someone can feel free to correct me here) that they simply untar and provide a top level package.
For example, say the package is "virtualenv", you'd end up with /usr/lib/python2.x/site-packages/virtualenv. If you install it with easy_install you'd get something like /usr/lib/python2.x/site-packages/virtualenv.egg-link that might point to /usr/lib/python2.x/site-packages/virtualenv-1.2-2.x.egg which may be a directory or zipped egg. Pip does something similar although it doesn't use eggs and instead will place the top level package directly in the lib directory.
I might be off on the paths, but the point is that each method takes into account different needs. This is why tools like virtualenv are helpful as they allow you to sandbox your Python libraries such that you can have any combination you need of libraries and versions.
Setuptools also allows installing packages as multiversion which means there is not a singular module_name.egg-link created. To import those packages you need to use pkg_resources and the __import__ function.
Going back to your original question, if you are happy with the system python and plan on using virtualenv and pip to build environments for different applications, then installing virtualenv and / or pip at the system level using apt-get seems totally appropriate. One word of caution though is that if you plan on upgrading your distributions Python, that may have a ripple effect through your virtualenvs if you linked back to your system site packages.
I should also mention that none of these options is inherently better than the others. They simply take different approaches. Using the system version is an excellent way to install Python applications, yet it can be a very difficult way to develop with Python. Easy install and setuptools is very convenient in a world without virtualenv, but if you need to use different versions of the same library, then it also become rather unwieldy. Pip and virtualenv really act more like a virtual machine. Instead of taking care to install things side by side, you just create an whole new environment. The downside here is that 30+ virtualenvs later you might have used up quite bit of diskspace and cluttered up your filesystem.
As you can see, with the many options it is difficult to say which method to use, but with a little investigation into your use cases, you should be able to find a method that works.
Do this:
curl "https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py" -o "get-pip.py"
python get-pip.py
pip install virtualenv
See
https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/installing.html
http://docs.python-guide.org/en/latest/dev/virtualenvs/
Since virtualenvs contain pip by default, I almost never install pip globally. What I do ends up looking more like:
$ sudo apt-get install python-setuptools
$ curl -O http://python-distribute.org/distribute_setup.py
$ sudo python distribute_setup.py
$ sudo easy_install virtualenv
I then proceed to install and set up virtualenvwrapper to my liking and off I go. it might also be worthwhile to take a look at Jeremy Avnet's virtualenv-burrito:
https://github.com/brainsik/virtualenv-burrito
#ericholscher says on Twitter, "The one in the official docs.."
It's a great point, you should do what the docs say.
Quoted from the official pip installation instructions at http://www.pip-installer.org/en/latest/installing.html:
$ curl -O https://github.com/pypa/virtualenv/raw/master/virtualenv.py
$ python virtualenv.py my_new_env
$ . my_new_env/bin/activate
(my_new_env)$ pip install ...
Starting from distro packages, you can either use:
sudo apt-get install python-virtualenv
which lets you create virtualenvs, or
sudo apt-get install python{,3}-pip
which lets you install arbitrary packages to your home directory.
If you're used to virtualenv, the first command gives you everything you need (remember, pip is bundled and will be installed in any virtualenv you create).
If you just want to install packages, the second command gives you what you need. Use pip like this:
pip install --user something
and put something like
PATH=~/.local/bin:$PATH
in your ~/.bashrc.
If your distro is ancient and you don't want to use its packages at all (except for Python itself, probably), you can download virtualenv, either as a tarball or as a standalone script:
wget -O ~/bin/virtualenv https://raw.github.com/pypa/virtualenv/master/virtualenv.py
chmod +x ~/bin/virtualenv
If your distro is more of the bleeding edge kind, Python3.3 has built-in virtualenv-like abilities:
python3 -m venv ./venv
This runs way faster, but setuptools and pip aren't included.
To install pip on a mac (osx), the following one liner worked great for me:
sudo easy_install pip
On Debian the best way to do it would be
sudo apt-get install python-pip
In Raspbian, there is even no need to mention python2.7. Indeed this is best way to install pip if python version in less then 2.7.9.
curl --silent --show-error --retry 5 https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py | sudo python
Thanks to #tal-weiss
https://github.com/pypa/pip/raw/master/contrib/get-pip.py is probably the right way now.
I use get-pip and virtualenv-burrito to install all this. Not sure if python-setuptools is required.
# might be optional. I install as part of my standard ubuntu setup script
sudo apt-get -y install python-setuptools
# install pip (using get-pip.py from pip contrib)
curl -O https://raw.github.com/pypa/pip/develop/contrib/get-pip.py && sudo python get-pip.py
# one-line virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper using virtualenv-burrito
curl -s https://raw.github.com/brainsik/virtualenv-burrito/master/virtualenv-burrito.sh | bash
The former method is fine. The only problem I can see is that you might end up with an old version of setuptools (if the apt repository hasn't been kept up-to-date..