How to Install Latest Python Version in Ubuntu

Python is the fastest-growing major general-purpose programming language. There are a number of reasons attributed to this, such as its readability and flexibility, ease to learn and use, reliability, and efficiency as well.

There are two major Python versions being used – 2 and 3 (the present and future of Python); the former will see no new major releases, and the latter is under active development and has already seen a lot of stable releases over the last few years. The latest stable release of Python 3 is version 3.11.

On newer Ubuntu releases, Python 3.10 or Python 3.8 is pre-installed, which is not the case for older Ubuntu versions.

In this article, we will explain how to install the latest Python 3.11 version on all Ubuntu releases via the apt package manager using deadsnakes PPA.

To install the latest version of Python from sources in all major Linux distributions, check out this guide:

Install Python 3.11 on Ubuntu

To install the latest Python 3.11 version, you can use “deadsnakes” team PPA which contains more recent Python versions packaged for Ubuntu.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install python3.11

If you want to install a specific Python version or multiple versions of Python in your Ubuntu system, you can simply run the following command with the Python version number as shown.

$ sudo apt install python3.10
$ sudo apt install python3.9
$ sudo apt install python3.8
$ sudo apt install python3.7
$ sudo apt install python3.6

To view a list of all Python binaries installed on your system, run the following ls command.

$ ls -l /usr/bin/python*
List Python Binaries
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      10 Apr 22  2022 /usr/bin/python3 -> python3.10
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5901416 Apr  2  2022 /usr/bin/python3.10
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 6705016 Oct 24 15:56 /usr/bin/python3.11
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root     960 Dec 23  2020 /usr/bin/python3-futurize
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root     964 Dec 23  2020 /usr/bin/python3-pasteurize

From the output in the screenshot above, the default Python version on the test system is 3.10, you can also check the Python version using the following command.

$ python -V

Python 3.10.4

To use Python 11, invoke the following command.

$ python3.11 
Access Python Shell
Python 3.11.0 (main, Oct 24 2022, 19:56:13) [GCC 11.2.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> print ("TecMint #1 Linux Blog");
TecMint #1 Linux Blog
>>> quit()

To exit the Python interpreter, type the following command and press Enter.

quit()
OR
exit()

Set Default Python Version in Ubuntu

If you’ve installed multiple versions of Python in your Ubuntu system, and you want to set only one version as default, then you need to perform some additional steps as shown.

$ python3 --version
$ sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python3 python3 /usr/bin/python3.10 1
$ sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python3 python3 /usr/bin/python3.11 2
$ sudo update-alternatives --config python3
$ python3 --version
Set Default Python Version in Ubuntu
Set Default Python Version in Ubuntu

That’s all! In this short article, we have explained how to install Python 3.11 in Ubuntu via the apt package manager. If you have questions, use the comment form below to reach us.

Aaron Kili
Aaron Kili is a Linux and F.O.S.S enthusiast, an upcoming Linux SysAdmin, web developer, and currently a content creator for TecMint who loves working with computers and strongly believes in sharing knowledge.

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5 thoughts on “How to Install Latest Python Version in Ubuntu”

  1. Firstly thank you for such information in this regard. But following the all above-mentioned steps I could not get the latest i.e 3.6 version of python on my ubuntu 16.04 pc.

    It pops out as:

    samundra@samundra-Vostro-5468:~$ python3.6
    No command 'python3.6' found, did you mean:
     Command 'python3.5' from package 'python3.5-minimal' (main)
    python3.6: command not found
    

    Now how can I resolve this and get the python version 3.6??

    Reply
  2. I have changed the symlink to python3 from python3.5 to python3.6, after that terminal won’t open, when i revert back that change terminal is working properly what might be the reason for that.

    Reply

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