How to Install Pip on Ubuntu

Pip is a command-line tool that allows you to install software packages written in Python. Learn how to install Pip on Ubuntu and how to use it for installing Python applications.

How to install pip on Ubuntu, Linux Mint and other Ubuntu-based distributions

Ubuntu 18.04 has both Python 2 and Python 3 installed by default and hence it has two possible variants of PIP for each Python versions. Pip, by default, refers to the Python 2 version. Pip for Python 3 is referred to as pip3.

Python 2 is deprecated and not available in Ubuntu 20.04 and higher versions. You can only install PIP3.

First, make sure that Python 3 is installed on Ubuntu. To check that, use this command:

python3 --version

If it shows you a number like Python 3.6.6, Python 3 is installed on your Linux system.

Now you can install pip3 using the command below:

sudo apt install python3-pip

You should verify that pip3 has been installed correctly using this command:

pip3 --version

It should show you a number like this:

pip 20.0.2 from /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pip (python 3.8)

This means that pip3 is successfully installed on your system.

python2 --version

sudo apt install python-pip

pip --version

pip 9.0.1 from /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages (python 2.7)

Recommended Read:

Setting Up Python Environments In Linux and Unix Systems

Getting both Python2 and Python3 virtual environments setup in Linux and Unix.

How to use pip commands

Now that you’ve installed pip, let’s quickly see some of the basic pip commands. These commands will help you use pip commands for searching, installing and removing Python packages.

Install a package with pip

There are two ways to install a package with PIP. You either install it for the currently logged in user or you install system wide.

If you use –user option, it installs the package for the logged in user i.e. you without needing sudo access. The installed python software is available only for you and other users on your system (if any) cannot use it.

pip3 install --user python_package_name

If you remove the –user option, the package will be installed system wide and it will be available for all the users on your system. You’ll need sudo access in this case.

sudo pip3 install python_package_name

PIP doesn’t support tab completion by default. So you need to know the exact package name that you want to install. How do you get that? I show that to you in the next section.

Search for packages using pip

To search for packages in the

Python

Package Index, you can use the following pip command:

pip3 search search_string

For example, if you search on ‘stress’, it will show all the packages that have the string ‘stress’ in their name or description.

pip3 search stress
stress (1.0.0)                - A trivial utility for consuming system resources.
s-tui (0.8.2)                 - Stress Terminal UI stress test and monitoring tool
stressypy (0.0.12)            - A simple program for calling stress and/or stress-ng from python
fuzzing (0.3.2)               - Tools for stress testing applications.
stressant (0.4.1)             - Simple stress-test tool
stressberry (0.1.7)           - Stress tests for the Raspberry Pi
mobbage (0.2)                 - A HTTP stress test and benchmark tool
stresser (0.2.1)              - A large-scale stress testing framework.
cyanide (1.3.0)               - Celery stress testing and integration test support.
pysle (1.5.7)                 - An interface to ISLEX, a pronunciation dictionary with stress markings.
ggf (0.3.2)                   - global geometric factors and corresponding stresses of the optical stretcher
pathod (0.17)                 - A pathological HTTP/S daemon for testing and stressing clients.
MatPy (1.0)                   - A toolbox for intelligent material design, and automatic yield stress determination
netblow (0.1.2)               - Vendor agnostic network testing framework to stress network failures
russtress (0.1.3)             - Package that helps you to put lexical stress in russian text
switchy (0.1.0a1)             - A fast FreeSWITCH control library purpose-built on traffic theory and stress testing.
nx4_selenium_test (0.1)       - Provides a Python class and apps which monitor      and/or stress-test the NoMachine NX4 web interface
physical_dualism (1.0.0)      - Python library that approximates the natural frequency from stress via physical dualism, and vice versa.
fsm_effective_stress (1.0.0)  - Python library that uses the rheological-dynamical analogy (RDA) to compute damage and effective buckling stress in prismatic shell structures.
processpathway (0.3.11)       - A nifty little toolkit to create stress-free, frustrationless image processing pathways from your webcam for computer vision experiments. Or observing your cat.

Remove packages installed via pip

If you want to remove a Python package installed via pip, you can use the remove option.

pip3 uninstall installed_package_name

You can use pip instead of pip3 in the above commands if you are using pip2 in Ubuntu 18.04.

I hope this quick tip helped you install pip on Ubuntu. If you have any questions or suggestions, please let me know in the comments section below.

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