Installing Python

1. If you are using a Debian-based distribution such as Ubuntu you can install Python with:

$ sudo apt-get install python

If your system runs CentOS/RHEL, use the following command to install Python:

$ sudo yum install python  

If it's a SuSE Linux distribution, use the following command to install Python:

$ sudo yum install python 

1. Check the version of installed Python interpreter with the following command in the Terminal:

$ python -version  

This will print the current installed Python version.

1. If you want to install a specific version of Python, we get the Python source code from the https://www.python.org/ website and install it manually. For this, you can download the required source archive from https://www.python.org/ftp/python/.

You can download with the following command; make sure to replace the version number with your required one:

$ wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.6.2/Python-3.6.2.tgz      

1. Then we have to extract the downloaded archive with the following command:

$ tar -xvzf Python-3.6.2.tgz    

It will be extracted to a Python-3.6.2 folder.

1. Now you can configure, build, and install Python, for this you need to have a C compiler installed on your system. If it's not installed you can do it as follows:

• • For Debian/Ubuntu:

$ sudo apt-get install gcc

• • For CentOs/ RHEL:

$ yum install gcc

Then, you can run configure for configuring the build and then install the build with the make altinstall command:

$ cd Python-3.6.2
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
$ make altinstall  

After installation, you can see both versions of Python installed on the system and you can choose which version to use while running the scripts.