The Python team has released its latest version Python 3.8 for general use. You can download the latest stable version Python 3.8 series and install it on your system. This article will help you to install Python 3.8.2 on Ubuntu, Debian, and LinuxMint operating system. You can visit here to read more about Python releases.
Step 1 – Prerequisite
As you are going to install Python 3.8 from the source. You need to install some development libraries to compile Python source code. Use the following command to install prerequisites for Python:
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 libffi-dev zlib1g-dev
Step 2 – Download Python 3.8
Download Python source code using the following command from python official site. You can also download the latest version in place of specified below.
cd /opt sudo wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.8.2/Python-3.8.2.tgz
Then extract the downloaded source archive file
sudo tar xzf Python-3.8.2.tgz
Step 3 – Compile Python Source
Use the below set of commands to compile Python source code on your system using the altinstall command.
cd Python-3.8.2 sudo ./configure --enable-optimizations sudo make altinstall
Step 4 – Check Python Version
Check the installed version of python using the following command. As you have not overwritten the default Python version on the system, So you have to use Python 3.8 as follows:
python3.8 -V Python-3.8.2
After successful installation remove the downloaded archive to save disk space
cd /opt sudo rm -f Python-3.8.2.tgz
Thank you very match!
Suppose that now I want to uninstall this version of python, how I can proceed?
Hello, and thank you for this important information. I have successfully installed Python 3.8 in Ubuntu three times now. Yet, every time I open my IDE (Spyder), Python 2.7 is running. When I write python in the Ubuntu terminal it shows python 2.7. When I write python 3.8 in the terminal, I get “python: can’t open file ‘3.8’ : [Errno 2] No such file or directory” Can you help? Thanks
very good,tanx
Great article from Rahul. Worked perfectly. Installed on Ubuntu 16.04 and WSL (1803 build 17134.1304).
Allowed me to develop for Alpine 3.11.3 docker container which uses python 3.8.1
Hallo Rahul,
thank you for your great description.
It worked proper on my raspberry pi and in a virtual machine with ubuntu18.04.
Did not work for me. I copied, pasted and executed every command line RAHUL listed for the install, with no errors returned. Type in python3.8 -V as directed yields -bash: python3.8: command not found. Type in python3 -V and Python 3.5.3 is returned. Any other way to verify that the install was successful, or how to correct?
Did you check your $PATH ?
works great with wsl and updated version of python 3.8.1. Nice work.