Installing python3.9 on ubuntu 20.04 from source

I’ve found installing python from source on ubuntu just makes your life easier. Python depends on a few system binaries and linked libraries so you need to ensure they are present first.

sudo apt install software-properties-common build-essential \
libreadline-gplv2-dev libncursesw5-dev libssl-dev libsqlite3-dev \
tk-dev libgdbm-dev libc6-dev libbz2-dev libncurses-dev libgdbm-dev \
libpcap-dev libexpat1-dev libffi-dev liblzma-dev libgdbm-compat-dev

Get the latest tarball link from python.org Linux/Unix

cd /opt
sudo wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.9.1/Python-3.9.1.tgz
sudo tar xzf Python-3.9.1.tgz
#read the readme
cat README.rst

It will tell you what to do:

./configure
make
make test
sudo make install

Python3.8 is installed by default…so to create a virtual environment use:

python3.9 -m venv env