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I'm just starting to learn python. For this I want to install the latest version on Ubuntu 18.04. I have accessed the page https://www.python.org/downloads/.

Python 3.8.3 should be the current verison, right? I entered the following commands and expected phyton 3.8 to be installed on my computer.

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install python3.8

Unfortunately, this is not the case. At least this request shows me a different version number.

python3
Python 3.6.9 (default, Apr 18 2020, 01:56:04) 
[GCC 8.4.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

Maybe I'm not reading it right?

What do the individual numbers mean and why can't I see 3.8 anywhere?

astridx
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1 Answers1

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Ubuntu does not distribute the latest packages, they distribute packages that have been tested and known to work together. See Why don't the Ubuntu repositories have the latest versions of software? for details.

You have specifically requested that python3.8 be installed, but incase some packages rely on the older python3 being installed python3 will still default to python 3.6.9. To specify that you really want to run python 3.8 run python3.8 on the command line in place of python3.

gmatht
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