Install Python 3 on Linux Mint

First of all, I don't see a point to show you how to install Python on Windows. It's dead easy download the installer from python.org and in few clicks you will have python up and running. Installing Python on Linux is bit different and requires some pre-work to be done.

So Let's get started.

Note: Every Modern Linux had a python Installed. You can verify this by opening your Terminal and typing python. It will open the python shell for you. Do not remove the installed version.

Step 1: Pre-requisites for Ubuntu

To be able to compile Python Source, you will need few packages. Fire up the terminal and execute this command

sudo apt-get install build-essential libncursesw5-dev libreadline5-dev libssl-dev libgdbm-dev libc6-dev libsqlite3-dev tk-dev

It will take some time to finish depending upon your bandwidth. :)

Step 2: Downloading Python Sources and extracting them on your disk

Download a tarball from the python site here is a direct link. Once, the download is completed you can extract the files by doing a right-click on the file and then clicking the extract option

OR

Fire up the terminal and execute this command which will download the file first and extract it on the disk.

wget http://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.2/Python-3.2rc2.tgz && tar -xvf Python-3.2rc2.tgz

Step 3: Installing Python 3.2

Fire up a new Terminal and execute the following commands individually.

1.   ./configure
2.   make
3.  sudo make altinstall