How to Install Python 2.7.16 on Ubuntu & LinuxMint

This article will help you to install Python 2.7.16 on your Ubuntu, Debian and LinuxMint operating systems. At writing time of this article Python 3.4.5 latest stable version is available to download and install. To install Python 3.4.5 visit following article.

Step 1 – Prerequsiteis

You must have installed the following prerequisites on your system. Execute the following commands on your system to install all required dependencies to build Python 2.7.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential checkinstall
sudo apt-get install libreadline-gplv2-dev libncursesw5-dev libssl-dev libsqlite3-dev tk-dev libgdbm-dev libc6-dev libbz2-dev

Step 2 – Download Python 2.7

Download Python using following command from python official site. You can also download latest version in place of specified below.

cd /usr/src
sudo wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.7.16/Python-2.7.16.tgz

Now extract the downloaded package.

sudo tar xzf Python-2.7.16.tgz

Step 3 – Compile Python Source

Use below set of commands to compile Python source code on your system using altinstall.

cd Python-2.7.16
sudo ./configure --enable-optimizations
sudo make altinstall

make altinstall is used to prevent replacing the default python binary file /usr/bin/python.

Step 4 – Check Python Version

Check the latest version installed of python using below command

python2.7 -V

Python 2.7.16