I just bought an inexpensive used Dell notebook that has Ubuntu/Linux as an operating system. Compared to Vista this is sweet.

It came with Python25 installed, but it was easy to use the Add/Remove application feature to get open source software from the Ubuntu site. I downloaded/installed Stani's Python Editor (SPE) IDE with just a click of a button, that also installed wxPython.

In the Ubuntu application list I also found the Eric4 IDE. I clicked the button and it downloaded and installed. This also installed the PyQT4 package. Now I got interested in the PyQT4 GUI toolkit.

There are tons of programming applications on the list, it's like a candy store. So next was QTdesiger, BOA and Sun's Open Office. Yes, I like Ubuntu and Linux, learning to use it quickly.

If anyone alse uses Ubuntu (or other Linux packages) and Python, please share your experiences, tips and wisdom. I am just an Ubuntu newbee.

I don't remember if SQLite is installed by default or not. A test is of course
import sqlite3
Even though you may not use it, there are various apps that do. Also, check out the programming forum there http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=39

Yeah i got a Dell inspron mini 9. One of the netbooks and it runs linux so well. I spent ages getting confused about how to install applications until about a week later i found the add/remove programs item. Woops!

But i love its speed and its community. Hope you have fun with ubuntu!

Module sqlite3 works just fine. I have successfully tested a fair number of Python programs from my collection.

I am also getting used to the Mozilla Firefox web browser.

I downloaded file pygame_1.8.1release.orig.tar.gz from the Ubuntu site. My silly newbee question is: "What Linux command do I use to install/setup it to Python?"

This was the first result from googling "ubuntu install pygame": http://www.pygame.org/wiki/kubuntu

One of the best things about Ubuntu(Linux in general) is that it has such a huge open-source user base that almost every question you have has a detailed guide online of how somebody else did it.

Thanks jlm699!
Going to the terminal and running command
sudo apt-get install python-pygame
works like a charm.

One of the best nuggets of wisdom I ever got about using Ubuntu (and other Debian based systems) is learn to use apt.

I suppose it applies to whatever package manager that your distribution happens to be using.

Here's a quick run down on how I use apt.

1. Find out the name of the package I want to install. If I'm not sure, I do sudo aptitude search software_name 2. Do sudo apt-get install package_name It's that easy!

Whenever I want to remove anything, I do sudo apt-get remove package_name
Sometimes I want to install software that there aren't packages for, or the packages are outdated. To do that I just get the source code and extract it, and then mostly it's as easy as these steps (these have nothing to do with apt-get by the way):

1. Become root on terminal (some might not like this approach). On Ubuntu it's sudo su 2. Navigate to folder with source-code (use cd dir_name to change directories)
3. ./configure This is if the software provides a configure script.
4. make 5. make install
Easy, isn't it?

One last thing, If you're installing python packages from source (and that source provides a setup.py script), it's almost always as easy as doing python setup.py install . Regardless of platform.

First, make sure that all repositories are enabled, and that you update after that. If you have Gnome Ubuntu and you want to install a KDE package for example, the default repos will not find KDE apps because those repos are not enabled.

But there also is the GUI Synaptic Package Manager on Ubuntu, thats really nice to start with, it gets all of the dependencies. It is search-able and categorised.
You find it in System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager

Thats what i use if i cant find it with the aptitude search.

Hope that helps