Ubuntu comes with Python 2.7.2+ pre-installed. (I also downloaded the python dev packages.) Because of another issue I'm having (Explained in extreme depth in How do I replace/update the version of the expat library used by Apache? ), Graham Dumpleton told me my distro had explicitly built Python in a way to use an external pyexpat implementation, so causing my issue. He also said I could build Python myself from source code to resolve the issue. How would I do this on Ubuntu? (Keep in mind I'm new to Linux.)

1. At a shell prompt (in a terminal), run

   sudo apt-get install build-essential 
   

   This will fetch all the common packages you need to build anything (e.g. the compiler etc.).

2. Then run

   sudo apt-get build-dep python2.7
   

   This will fetch all the libraries you need to build python.

3. Then download the source code for python and decompress it into a directory.

4. go there and run

   ./configure --prefix=/path/where/you/want/python/installed
   

5. Then make and then make install to get it built and installed:

   make && make install
   

If you hit snags on the way, ask back here and I'll try to offer some guidance.