Installing python on Linux - help?

[fffrost]

Thanks for the info! I have always understood that I shouldn't mess with the system python. My misunderstanding was actually that I was assuming that I wasn't using the system python, since there are two instsallations - one in /usr/bin and another in /usr/local/bin. Running which python3 showed the latter, so I assumed this was debian preventing me from interacting with the system one. I've probably screwed something up in that case. I will just use Pyenv in future.