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

Add applications to startup in Linux Mint or Ubuntu

For everything there is a hard way and the not so hard way. Similarly, you can add Startup application using the Terminal or just use the GUI.

We always look for the not so hard way of doing things. So here's the same for adding applications to your startup.

Open Startup Applications from Menu. I will add Brightside to my startup applications for example.

Click on Add

Click on Browse and go to /usr/bin. This is where almost all the applications are stored. Click on the application you want and click Open.

 Now add a Name and Comment to your Startup application. And then click Add.

Congratulations! You have just added the application of your choice to Startup!!

Share and enjoy your newfound knowledge!

Develop applications for Linux Mint

Linux Mint community is always looking for softwares and applications that'll ease the lives of the end users and also show Gates where to put his feet. Open source development is the very best a person can do towards humanity.

Now Linux Mint can run applications written in Java, C++, other C derivatives and Python and a plethora of other languages. However among all the languages, Python is the most powerful. Java is also powerful but it leads to bloated usage of resources. So the language of choice, according to me is Python and its also been vouched by many people to be very easy to learn. So why not learn some Python and start contributing to humanity in your own way?

For absolute beginners I would recommend Dive into Python 3 by Mark Pilgrim which you can download for free as its freely licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license.

Another Book that I really liked was Learning Python, 4th edition.

Both the books that I mentioned above are very good books if you are novices in programming. Get them and start learning. I am also gonna start learning some Python and will get back here with the results!

Reactivate Alt + f2 in Linux Mint or Oneiric

I keep on customizing my system and one of the most useful tools for that is the Run Command Prompt by pressing alt + f2. However, since the past two days, it stopped working all of a sudden. Took me a while to realize what I had done to deactivate it.

Basically it had conflicted with another tool and had been deactivated by itself. To reactivate alt + f2, all you have to do is go to Keyboard settings and click on Shortcuts.

Click on System in the left panel and you will see a Run command prompt option.

Keyboard settings

Click on disable to enable the option and enter the new shortcut by pressing alt + f2.

Now your alt + f2 is reactivated! Enjoy!!

Ubuntu Vs. Linux Mint

Many of my friends and colleagues have asked me the question: If Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, wouldn't it be better to use Ubuntu instead of Mint? Well, everyone is entitled to have their own personal favourite distro and mine happens to be Linux Mint.

Here are a few reasons why I think Linux Mint is better than Ubuntu.

First of all Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu and being a community driven project, it has fixes of all the bugs that appear on Ubuntu. For example, my machine's integrated bluetooth did not work right out of the box when I tried out Ubuntu on a virtual machine designed for testing new releases. However, Linux Mint did. That just shows if there are any reported bugs in Ubuntu, its more than likely that they have been removed in Linux Mint.

Why choose Ubuntu when you can download all of the Ubuntu applications and run them on Linux Mint without a glitch. Both support the .deb extension. You can also install the Ubuntu Software Centre in Linux Mint and that will give you two software managers on your system.

Play media out of the box in Mint. When you install Ubuntu, you have to download all the codecs before you can start playing multimedia. Not in Mint though, it comes equipped with everything you can think of and more.

All these reasons and more mak it clear that the winner is Mint. However that's my opinion. What's yours?

And just in case you decide to try out Linux Mint 12, Lisa read my post on how to install Linux Mint 12 on your system.