Installing SciPy on Linux Debian

Question

I'm a Linux n00b, and I want to install SciPy to help me on a homework asignment.

This page has confused me more than helped me.

I have been guiding myself on the INSTALL.txt file I got from sourceforge, which says

PREREQUISITES
=============

SciPy requires the following software installed:

1) Python__ 2.4.x or newer

   Debian packages: python python-dev

   Make sure that the Python package distutils is installed before
   continuing. For example, in Debian GNU/Linux, distutils is included
   in the python-dev package.

   Python must also be compiled with the zlib module enabled.

__ http://www.python.org

2) NumPy__ 1.2.0 or newer

   Debian package: python-numpy

__ http://www.numpy.org/

3) Complete LAPACK__ library (see NOTES 1, 2, 3)

   Debian/Ubuntu packages (g77): atlas3-base atlas3-base-dev

   Various SciPy packages do linear algebra computations using the LAPACK
   routines. SciPy's setup.py scripts can use number of different LAPACK
   library setups, including optimized LAPACK libraries such as ATLAS__ or
   the Accelerate/vecLib framework on OS X. The notes below give
   more information on how to prepare the build environment so that
   SciPy's setup.py scripts can use whatever LAPACK library setup one has.

__ http://www.netlib.org/lapack/
__ http://math-atlas.sourceforge.net/

Via Synaptic Package Manager I downloaded all this + IPython.

As I guess I'll get stuck in between you guys answering my first questions and finally getting this thing up and running, I'll update this single post various times.

1st question: Guiding myself through this link I downloaded the sourceforge .tar file with scipy.

I extracted its contents on /home/antonio/Desktop/Downloads

I ran the commands that appear on the link:

jajaja:/home/antonio/Desktop/Downloads# cd scipy-?.?.?
jajaja:/home/antonio/Desktop/Downloads/scipy-0.7.0# setup.py build
bash: setup.py: command not found

^ WHY??

Why does it appear command not found? Should I extract the contents of the .tar file somewhere else?

Answer 1

The link tells you to execute

python setup.py build

but you are executing

setup.py build

Since you are a n00b, you must follow instructions exactly.

Answer 2

Why don't you just install SciPy directly? It's not the latest version, but maybe 0.6 is enough for you needs?

# apt-get install python-scipy

as root, or

$ sudo apt-get install python-scipy

Answer 3

I recently installed scipy on my Debian/Lenny system. All I did was install (using aptitude) the Debian packages

• python-scipy
• python-matplotlib
• ipython

fire up ipython -pylab in a terminal and it all works great.