Installation¶
Learn how to install Python 3 on your machine.
But, before actually installing there are some points that I would like you to note. Python actually comes pre-installed on most operating system these days, but its the old and legacy version Python 2.
Python 2 will officially be retiring on Jan 1st, 2020, so its ideal to straight away get working with Python 3. Check out the installation instructions as per your operating system.
Installing on Windows¶
Installing Python 3 on Windows is just as easy as installing any other program, in addition to Python 3, I would highly recommend installing Git Bash, so that you can work with the exact same commands in the tutorial as mine and we need not keeping on switching between operating systems. Ofcouse, I will let you know whenever there are differences.
Navigate to following link and download the setup file
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Under Stable Releases check out your system and download the setup file accordingly, in most cases your system should be 64 bit, if that's the case you can download the following setup file
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After downloading you can install it as you would install any other program. The installer will install everything and also setup environment variables.
Installing on Mac¶
Navigate to following link and download the setup file
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Under Stable Releases you can download the following file
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And then install it as any other program, it will automatically setup environment variables for you.
Alternatively
If you are using brew, then installing Python is very simple, open your terminal and type
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By default brew will install python 3 to the following directory -
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You can check it by typing the following on your terminal
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Installing on Linux¶
Installing Python 3.7 on Ubuntu.
If you are using Ubuntu 19.04 Disco Dingo then you already have Python 3.7.3 pre-installed, just sit back and you can directly skip to "Setting Up Alias"
For others, start by updating ubuntu, open your terminal and type the following -
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Add the repository
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Install Python 3.7
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Checking Version¶
You can check the installed python version.
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Python 3 also installs "pip3" by default, it is the package manager for python, you can check its version by
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Setting Up Alias (Optional)¶
Since Python 2 comes pre-installed on almost all the operating systems, the default python keyword points to Python 2, for using Python 3 we need to type python3, which for me gets a little boring and unintuitive since Python 2 will be reaching its end of life soon.
So, I just setup a alias, which simply means that, I say to my computer, "Whenever I type python it has to refer to Python 3 and not to Python 2".
To setup a alias open your terminal and navigate to your home directory
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If you are using bash, open the bash_profile, since I am using Visual Studio Code, I can directly open the file by typing
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If you are using atom, you can open by
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Or if you are using PyCharm
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Instead of bash if you are using zsh, you can open .zshrc
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Add the following 2 lines at the end of the file
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Now close and restart your terminal, to check if its working properly type the following
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It should show the current Python 3 installed version.
Setting up your development environment and code editor¶
(External Links)
Excellent environment setup videos by Corey Schafer -