How To Install Python 3.9 on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Python 3.9 on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Python is an open-source and beginner-friendly programming language. Python 3.9 is the latest major release of the Python language. It includes many new features such as assignment expressions, positional-only parameters, f-strings support, and more.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of Python 3.9 on a Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa) server. You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 20.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install Python 3.9 on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa

Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt commands in the terminal.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install software-properties-common

Step 2. Installing Python 3.9 on Ubuntu 20.04.

• Install Python 3.9 on Ubuntu from Source

Install the dependencies for Python:

sudo apt install build-essential zlib1g-dev libncurses5-dev libgdbm-dev libnss3-dev libssl-dev libreadline-dev libffi-dev libsqlite3-dev wget libbz2-dev

Next, download the latest release’s source code from the Python download page:

wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.9.0/Python-3.9.0.tgz
tar -xf Python-3.9.0.tgz

Then, run the configure script, which performs a number of checks to make sure all of the dependencies on your system are present:

cd Python-3.9.0
./configure --enable-optimizations

After that, start the Python 3.9 build process:

make -j 12
sudo make altinstall

Verify the installation:

python3.9 --version

• Install Python 3.9 on Ubuntu with apt

Now we add the deadsnakes PPA to your Ubuntu system:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa

To install Pip for Python 3.9, run the following command:

sudo apt install python3.9

Verify the installation by printing the Python version number:

python3.9 --version

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Python. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Python 3.9 on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official Python website.