How to install Python on Windows, Mac, Ubuntu

The most popular programming language today is Python. Python is used not only for application programming and website design but also by data analysts for analysis. To use Python, you need to install Python on Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu, depending on your operating system. In this article, Lucid Gen will guide you through installing Python for all three operating systems.

Install Python on Windows and macOS

How to install Python on Windows and Mac will be the same. We will start installing Python according to the steps below:

Step 1: Visit python.org/downloads and click the Download Python button.

Step 2: Open the downloaded installation file to install Python on Windows and Mac. Just keep clicking the Continue button until the Python installation is successful.

Note: For Windows, you must check the Add Python to PATH box to run the Python file on CMD.

Step 3: After successfully installing Python on Windows or Mac, you will have a Python folder like this. You can open the IDLE file to use Python.

Step 4: We must install Pip to create a virtual environment for Python and install packages. Open the CMD application on Windows or Terminal on Mac, then enter the following lines of code sequentially to install Pip on your computer:

Download the Pip installation file:

curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o get-pip.py

Start installing Pip:

python get-pip.py

Delete Pip installation file:

rm -rf get-pip.py

Install Python on Ubuntu

By default, Ubuntu already has Python available. But if you need to install a specific version of Python, then follow these steps:

Step 1: If you use Ubuntu Server, access your computer using SSH; if you use Ubuntu Desktop, open the Terminal application.

Step 2: Check the default Python version on Ubuntu. If the version you need is incorrect, we will go to the step of installing Python on Ubuntu below.

python3 --version

Step 3: Enter the code lines below to install Python for Ubuntu.

Update software packages in Ubuntu:

sudo apt update

Install Python on Ubuntu: Change version 3.10 to the version you need.

sudo apt install python3.10

Install Pip on Ubuntu:

sudo apt install python3-pip

Using Python is simple

Open the CMD application on Windows or the Terminal application on Mac and Ubuntu. Try a few commands below to check if Python works well on your computer.

Check the Python version:

python --version

Using Python:

python

print("Hello world!")

Exit Python:

exit()

Note: For macOS and Ubuntu, if the command python doesn’t work, use python3.

Use the Python virtual environment

In most cases, we need to install additional packages to support our work and projects. However, these libraries can sometimes conflict with one another and potentially disrupt the default Python environment. To avoid such issues, it’s best practice to create a separate virtual environment for each specific project. This way, each project can have its own set of dependencies, ensuring that they don’t interfere with each other or with the default environment.

For this part, you should read more of Python’s documentation because I find their documentation to be very instructive. But if you are a data scientist, please refer to how to create a Python virtual environment using Conda.

Conclusion

This tutorial lets you install Python on Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu completely. Along with Python, data analysts will install SQL server on Mac or Windows to facilitate learning and exploration. Please follow articles related to data analysis on Lucid Gen. If you need any answers, please comment below.