How To Install Python 3.9 on Ubuntu, Debian & LinuxMint

Python is an object-oriented, high-level programming language. The Python 3.9 stable version has been released with several improvements and security updates. Which included multiple new modules and improved existing modules and new features.

As of today, Python 3.9 is the latest stable version available for productions environments. Most of the Debian-based Linux distribution includes older versions of Python in software repositories. Also, the Debian packages are not available for all distributions. In this tutorial, you will learn to compile Python 3.9 from source code and install it on Debian-based systems.

This tutorial will help you to how to install Python 3.9 on Ubuntu, Debian, and LinuxMint systems using source code.

Prerequisites

Login to the Debian system with sudo privileged account access. Open a terminal (CTRL+ALT+T) and execute the below commands to update packages.

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade 

Then install the required packages for the compilation of Python source code.

sudo apt install wget build-essential libreadline-gplv2-dev libncursesw5-dev \
     libssl-dev libsqlite3-dev tk-dev libgdbm-dev libc6-dev libbz2-dev libffi-dev zlib1g-dev  

Installing Python 3.9 with Source

Download the latest Python version source code from the official websites. Then compile the source code for your system and install it.

Follow the below steps to install Python 3.9 on Debian systems:

1. You can directory download Python 3.9 source archive from its official site or use below command.

   wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.9.7/Python-3.9.7.tgz 
   

2. Once the download is completed, extract the archive file on your system.

   tar xzf Python-3.9.7.tgz 
   

3. Change to the extracted directory with cd command, then prepare the Python source code for the compilation on your system.

   cd Python-3.9.7 
   ./configure --enable-optimizations 
   

4. Finally, run the following command to complete the Python installation on the Debian system. The altinstall prevents the compiler to override default Python versions.

   make altinstall 
   

Wait for the Python installation to complete on your system.

Check Python Version

At this step, you have successfully installed Python 3.9 on Debian 10 system. You need to type python3.9 to use this version. For example, to check the Python version, execute:

python3.9 -V 

Python 3.9.7

This will also install pip for Python 3.9.

pip3.9 -V 

pip 20.2.3 from /usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pip (python 3.9)

That’s it, You have successfully installed Python 3.9 on Debian 10 system.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you have learned to install Python 3.9 on Ubuntu, Debian, and LinuxMint systems using source code. You can try Python examples via command line.