Which python installation should I use?

Question

I'm about to refresh myself in programming and I have decided on Python 2.6 for that. I have searched the net and it gave me two possible installers for download. One is from the Python site and another is from Activestate. Which one should I install on my Windows computer?

Answer 1

I suggest you to download from python site

Answer 2

Activestate gives you paid support. While this may be very important / critical to some companies, most do just fine with python.org version, particularly those who experiment. There are other crazy ones like Stackless Python, Google's implementation in C++, Cython, etc.

I would say that those are not that important to you unless speed / efficient multithreading is a must. Use the regular one. It may be an order of magnitude slower than C, but it works just fine AND it is the most popular Python implementation out there, so you know it is well-tested for a free version.

Answer 3

If all you want is refresh your programming skill, then installing the version from the official site should be more than enough

Answer 4

Download Python 2.6 from the python.org and read its tutorial as a start.

Answer 5

ActivePython is essentially the same as python.org's distro - except you also get the following:

• PyPM: a binary package manager from ActiveState, so you can install extra modules without having to compile them yourself. (See available modules)
• Additional packages: virtualenv, setuptools, sqlalchemy, pip
• PyWin32 - Accessing Windows API from Python
• Extra documentation/tutorials (CHM on Windows) such as Dive Into Python, FAQs, PEPs, etc..
• PythonWin IDE (although Komodo Edit may suit some better)

If you are a business owner, then ActiveState can also provide commercial support.

Answer 6

Since you're running Windows you may want to also install (after Python 2.6) Pywin32 - Python Extensions for Windows: . It also has a very nice IDE (PythonWin) which you may prefer to IDLE. A version of Pywin32 is also available for Python 3.x.

Answer 7

I also do recommend ACTIVESTATE - with the standard python.org package you will have lots of trouble when you want to install packages!

BUT be prepared to be bitten from time to time by ActiveState:

D:\>pypm search lxml
*** Packages marked [BE] below require a valid
*** Business Edition license to install. Please visit
*** http://www.activestate.com/business-edition for more details.

 domstripper lxml.html based DOM manipulator
 flea        Test WSGI applications using lxml
 gocept.lxml Primarily proivdes zope3 interface definitions for lxml
 lwebstring  lxml-based implementation of webstring, an XML template engine
 [BE] lxml   Powerful and Pythonic XML processing library combining libxml2/libxsl
 [BE] lxml-wrapper          lxml wrapper that simplifies xml generation code.
 [BE] lxmlmiddleware        stack of middleware to deal with a response as a LXML etree
 [BE] lxmlproc              lxml version of xsltproc
 plone.recipe.lxml     Buildout recipe that creates a lxml egg
 repoze.xmliter    Wrapper for ``lxml`` trees which serializes to string upon iteration.
 z3c.recipe.staticlxml A recipe to build lxml

they do not provide lxml for free with their package manager, you need a business license.