How To Install Python 3.9 on Debian 10

Python is an object-oriented, high-level programming language. It is open-source with a large community. Python is used as a key language among the top tech companies like Google. The Python 3.9 stable version has been released with several improvements and security updates. It included multiple new modules, improved existing modules, and many other features.

Debian 10 default repositories come with Python 3.7. So if your application can work with this version, install it from default repositories using command apt install python3 . To install Python 3.9 on Debian 10 follow this tutorial.

This tutorial will describe you install Python 3.9 on Debian 10 Linux system.

Prerequisites

Login to the Debian system with sudo privileged account access. Open a terminal (CTRL+ALT+T) and execute the below commands to update packages.

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade 

Then install the required packages for the compilation of Python source code.

sudo apt install wget build-essential libreadline-gplv2-dev libncursesw5-dev \
     libssl-dev libsqlite3-dev tk-dev libgdbm-dev libc6-dev libbz2-dev libffi-dev zlib1g-dev  

Install Python 3.9 on Debian

The default Debian repositories contain Python 3.7 only. So this tutorial will use Python source code for installation on Debian 10 system.

Follow the below steps to install Python 3.9 on Debian:

1. Download Python – You can directory download Python 3.9 source archive from its official site.

   wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.9.6/Python-3.9.6.tgz 
   

2. Extract Archive – After downloading, extract the archive file on your system.

   tar xzf Python-3.9.6.tgz 
   

3. Compiling Python Source – Change to the extracted directory with cd command, then prepare the Python source code for the compilation on your system.

   cd Python-3.9.6 
   ./configure --enable-optimizations 
   

4. Install Python 3.9 – Finally, run the following command to complete the Python installation on Debian system. The altinstall prevents the compiler to override default Python versions.

   make altinstall 
   

Wait for the Python installation to complete on your system.

Check Python Version

At this step, you have successfully installed Python 3.9 on Debian 10 system. You need to type python3.9 to use this version. For example, to check the Python version, execute:

python3.9 -V 

Python 3.9.6

This will also install pip for Python 3.9.

pip3.9 -V 

pip 20.2.3 from /usr/local/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pip (python 3.9)

That’s it, You have successfully installed Python 3.9 on Debian 10 system.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you have learned to install Python 3.9 on Debian Linux systems using source code. You can try Python examples via command line.