Question

How to install a specific Python version on Ubuntu?

In some cases, you might need to install a very specific Python version on your Ubuntu server which might be different from the one that comes from the default apt repositories.

Here is how you could do that!

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Bobby Iliev
Site Moderator
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• March 1, 2021
Accepted Answer

Hi there,

Thank you for reporting this.

This is going to be beyond the scope of the tutorial. However here is how you could install a specific version if needed:

First, install the required libraries:

  1. sudo apt-get install libssl-dev openssl make gcc

Then choose the specific Python from here:

https://www.python.org/ftp/python/

After that go to the /opt directory and download the archive of the specific version:

  1. cd /opt

  2. wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.9.2/Python-3.9.2.tgz

Extract the archive:

  1. tar xzvf Python-3.9.2.tgz

Then cd into the directory:

  1. cd Python-3.9.2

And finally, compile the new version:

  1. ./configure

  2. make

  3. make install

Finally you can create a symlink for that specific Python version so that you could use the binary from anywhere:

  1. sudo ln -fs /opt/Python-3.9.2/Python /usr/bin/python3.9

Then you could check if the python3.9 version is available:

  1. python3.9 --version

Hope that this helps. Regards, Bobby