If you don’t have any Python version installed, you may install Python version 3 with the following command: sudo apt install python3 Use python3 instead of python Still, which version(s) you have with: type python python2 python3Īs you can see in the screenshot below, I have Python version 3 installed on my system. Ubuntu 18.04 had Python 2 as well but 20.04 and higher versions have Python 3 only. It should already be installed but no harm in double checking. Make sure you have Python installed on your system So, what are your options when you see Python command not found error on Ubuntu? Let me go over them. To summarize, you have Python installed on Ubuntu already. Python 2 is no longer supported and Python 3.x is what you get on Ubuntu. Similarly, when Python version 3 was released, distributions started providing both python2 and python3 packages. Other applications or libraries also specified python or python2 in their code.Įventually, Python version 1 was discontinued completely but the package continued to be named python2. So, they named the newer Python version python2 to distinguish between the two.

When Python released version 2, Ubuntu and other distros had to provide support for both Python version 1.x and 2.x. It’s because the Python language is not installed as python but python3 or python2 (in some older Ubuntu versions).Īt some point in time in the distant past, Python was actually available as python package/executable. Why there is no python command found on Ubuntu?

The python command is actually python3 here. If you pay attention to the error message, it clears a lot of things. Command ‘python’ not found, did you mean:Ĭommand ‘python’ from deb python-is-python3 However, if you try to use the python command in Ubuntu (and some other distributions), it will throw an error. How do you run a Python program in the Linux terminal? Like this, right? python program.py

Install python 2.7 ubuntu 14.04