Two versions of python on linux. how to make 2.7 the default

Question

You probably don't actually want to change your default Python.

Your distro installed a standard system Python in /usr/bin, and may have scripts that depend on this being present, and selected by #! /usr/bin/env python. You can usually get away with running Python 2.6 scripts in 2.7, but do you want to risk it?

On top of that, monkeying with /usr/bin can break your package manager's ability to manage packages. And changing the order of directories in your PATH will affect a lot of other things besides Python. (In fact, it's more common to have /usr/local/bin ahead of /usr/bin, and it may be what you actually want—but if you have it the other way around, presumably there's a good reason for that.)

But you don't need to change your default Python to get the system to run 2.7 when you type python.

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First, you can set up a shell alias:

alias python=/usr/local/bin/python2.7

Type that at a prompt, or put it in your ~/.bashrc if you want the change to be persistent, and now when you type python it runs your chosen 2.7, but when some program on your system tries to run a script with /usr/bin/env python it runs the standard 2.6.

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Alternatively, just create a virtual environment out of your 2.7 (or separate venvs for different projects), and do your work inside the venv.

Add /usr/local/bin to your PATH environment variable, earlier in the list than /usr/bin.

Generally this is done in your shell's rc file, e.g. for bash, you'd put this in .bashrc:

export PATH="/usr/local/bin:$PATH"

This will cause your shell to look first for a python in /usr/local/bin, before it goes with the one in /usr/bin.

(Of course, this means you also need to have /usr/local/bin/python point to python2.7 - if it doesn't already, you'll need to symlink it.)

Enter the command

which python

//output:
/usr/bin/python

cd /usr/bin
ls -l

Here you can see something like this

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root   root            9 Mar  7 17:04  python -> python2.7

your default python2.7 is soft linked to the text 'python'

So remove the softlink python

sudo rm -r python

then retry the above command

ls -l

you can see the softlink is removed

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root   root      3670448 Nov 12 20:01  python2.7

Then create a new softlink for python3.6

ln -s /usr/bin/python3.6 python

Then try the command python in terminal

//output:
Python 3.6.7 (default, Oct 22 2018, 11:32:17) 
[GCC 8.2.0] on linux

Type help, copyright, credits or license for more information.

Verify current version of python by:

$ python --version

then check python is symbolic link to which file.

  $ ll /usr/bin/python

Output Ex:

 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Jun 16  2014 /usr/bin/python -> python2.7*

Check other available versions of python:

$ ls /usr/bin/python*

Output Ex:

/usr/bin/python     /usr/bin/python2.7-config  /usr/bin/python3.4         /usr/bin/python3.4m-config  /usr/bin/python3.6m         /usr/bin/python3m
/usr/bin/python2    /usr/bin/python2-config    /usr/bin/python3.4-config  /usr/bin/python3.6          /usr/bin/python3.6m-config  /usr/bin/python3m-config
/usr/bin/python2.7  /usr/bin/python3           /usr/bin/python3.4m        /usr/bin/python3.6-config   /usr/bin/python3-config     /usr/bin/python-config

If want to change current version of python to 3.6 version edit file ~/.bashrc:

vim ~/.bashrc

add below line in the end of file and save:

alias python=/usr/local/bin/python3.6

To install pip for python 3.6

$ sudo apt-get install python3.6 python3.6-dev
$ sudo curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/ez_setup.py -o - | sudo python3.6
$ sudo easy_install pip

On Success, check current version of pip:

$ pip3 -V

Output Ex:

pip 1.5.4 from /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages (python 3.6)