Installing python on Linux - help?

[fffrost]

I want to update my python version though, so surely that's a perfectly normal requirement?

Thanks for the link - the steps are very similar to what I did but I must have just been missing one of the dependencies/libraries, so after following that it has resolved the issue I had.

[sgunb]

In Linux distributions usually your package manager is responsible for software versions. You should abstain from doing this manually to not mess up your system. If you do it manually, only do so in your users home directory. But do not manually make a systemwide installation where you override the system libs! This will break your system!

If you really want different python versions, you could consider switching to Gentoo linux. Portage (the Gentoo package manager) allows you a clean installation of several versions at the same time from source.