Setting up the Python and Jupyter Notebook Environment

Install the essentials with

sudo apt-get install build-essential python3-dev python3 python3-pip

I’m going to recommend setting up a virtual environment in which to install python packages using pip, which is python’s package manager (like apt-get). The virtual environment is like a sandbox in which your Python version is somewhat insulated from the OS. The reason for this comes from web development, where updates might break things (they shouldn’t, but you never know), and I figured this would be a better practice for all Python package management, more details from here

I’ve made these arguments before but I’ll give you the notes:

• System updates break everything
• Installing apt packages can overwrite pip-installed things
• Version conflicts
• Distribution upgrades are unpredictable chaos. Seriously. I’ve lost hair to these.

I would strongly advocate using virtualenv. It’s a massive pain in the wherever to get going but once you’ve got it set up you have a complete Python environment under your complete control. This does mean more work (you’ll have to check things for updates and pip doesn’t really help there yet) but you don’t have to worry about what Ubuntu’s doing.

Set up virtual environment

sudo apt-get install virtualenv  
pip3 install --user virtualenvwrapper  

mkdir python3-courses  
virtualenv python3-courses/  

Note: If you have multiple versions of virtualenv installed, you may have to use virtualenv3-x instead.

cd python3-courses/
source bin/activate
python --version

This should print Python 3.X.X. Now install scientific packages pip install -U numpy scipy sklearn pandas. In order to install matplotlib I had to install the following external dependency with sudo apt-get install libfreetype6*and then pip install -U matplotlib.

Also graphviz has to be installed as an Ubuntu package. sudo apt-get install graphviz

Then install the iPython Notebook (renamed to Jupyter): pip install jupyter. Then fire up a notebook with jupyter notebook, this should open a new notebook up in the browser.