Table of Contents
If you are using a Linux distribution such as Fedora or Mandrake or {put your choice here}, or a BSD system such as FreeBSD or OpenBSD, then you probably already have Python installed on your system.
To test if you have Python already installed in your Linux box, open a shell terminal (gnome-terminal or konsole or xterm) and enter the command python -V as shown below.
$ python -V Python 2.3.3
$ is the prompt of the shell. It will be different for different users and hence I will indicate the prompt by just $ .
If you see some version information like the one shown above, then you have Python installed already.
However, if you get a message like this one:
$ python -V bash: python: command not found
then you don't have Python installed. This is highly unlikely but possible. You have two ways of installing Python on your system.
Install Python from your Linux distribution CDs [1] such as your Fedora/Red Hat/Mandrake/Debian/{your choice here}.
Visit Python.org/download/ , get the latest version and follow the instructions given at the website on how to install Python.