I've been trying to set up Python correctly on my Linux machine for some time and never been 100% happy with how it's set up.
I'm running the latest Linux Mint which out of the box comes with a python2 and a python3 version in /usr/bin
So my first question is should I try to upgrade those versions to the latest versions? My reading suggests these are the versions the system uses and I shouldn't touch them.
Next I've decided it's best to use checkinstall. Again from my reading it suggests to use altinstall as my make target this is to stop the system python being overwritten. However whether I use install or altinstall both targets seem to end up in usr/local/bin.
The symlinks in /usr/bin are hooking up python python2 and python3 I've noticed that other applications like apt break if I break those symlinks.
So generally what I'm asking is what is the best way to install the latest versions of python3 and python2 without breaking the system and having them available to myself. I'd like python2 accessible as python2 and python3 and python will return python3.
Thanks
