How to install python2 and pip on Ubuntu 20.04

Parathan Thiyagalingam
1 min readMar 21, 2022
Photo by James Harrison on Unsplash

Why to install Python2

Most of the applications are now shifted to Python3 and becoming re-written source code. But somehow, some of the not evolving scripts which were written on Python2 needs to be executed with the help of Python2.

To install Python2

sudo apt install python-minimal

The above command will download the Python2 last version (2.7.15).

Check the version using the following command

python2 --version

To check python3 version

python3 --version

To manage the Python packages we need to install pip.

Install pip for python2

wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/pip/2.7/get-pip.py

a new file named get-pip.py will be downloaded.

Then execute the following command in the terminal

python2 get-pip.py

Now, you have installed pip for python2

I am going to download a python2 supported package using pip for python2 In my case, wikitools

python2 -m pip install wikitools

That’s it. We have installed the Packages for Python2

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