ImportError: No module named '_tkinter', please install the python3-tk package

Question

I've already gone through all the similar questions in this regard and tried the solutions proposed there. But I'm unable to get this error sorted out though my python3-tk package is installed in the proper virtualenv that I'm using for my project.

Though in my project, I don't use tkinter, when i try to run the file, I'm getting the following error related to the _tkinter module.

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/python3.5/tkinter/init.py", line 36, in import _tkinter
ImportError: No module named '_tkinter'

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/manuelanayantarajeyaraj/PycharmProjects/ChatbotWord2Vec/main.py", line 2, in from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
File "/home/manuelanayantarajeyaraj/usr/myProject/my_project/lib/python3.5/site-packages/matplotlib/pyplot.py", line 115, in _backend_mod, new_figure_manager, draw_if_interactive, _show = pylab_setup()
File "/home/manuelanayantarajeyaraj/usr/myProject/my_project/lib/python3.5/site-packages/matplotlib/backends/init.py", line 62, in pylab_setup [backend_name], 0)
File "/home/manuelanayantarajeyaraj/usr/myProject/my_project/lib/python3.5/site-packages/matplotlib/backends/backend_tkagg.py", line 4, in from . import tkagg # Paint image to Tk photo blitter extension.
File "/home/manuelanayantarajeyaraj/usr/myProject/my_project/lib/python3.5/site-packages/matplotlib/backends/tkagg.py", line 5, in from six.moves import tkinter as Tk
File "/home/manuelanayantarajeyaraj/usr/myProject/my_project/lib/python3.5/site-packages/six.py", line 92, in get result = self._resolve()
File "/home/manuelanayantarajeyaraj/usr/myProject/my_project/lib/python3.5/site-packages/six.py", line 115, in _resolve return _import_module(self.mod)
File "/home/manuelanayantarajeyaraj/usr/myProject/my_project/lib/python3.5/site-packages/six.py", line 82, in _import_module import(name)
File "/usr/lib/python3.5/tkinter/init.py", line 38, in raise ImportError(str(msg) + ', please install the python3-tk package')
ImportError: No module named '_tkinter', please install the python3-tk package

Hence, I navigated to the location of my interpreter and created a virtualenv and installed the python3-tk package using the following

sudo apt-get install python3-tk

When I checked, all the packages seem to be up to date

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
python3-tk is already the newest version (3.6.5-3~16.04.york0.2).
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libappindicator1 libindicator7 libllvm4.0 linux-headers-4.10.0-28
  linux-headers-4.10.0-28-generic linux-headers-4.13.0-36
  linux-headers-4.13.0-36-generic linux-headers-4.13.0-37
  linux-headers-4.13.0-37-generic linux-image-4.10.0-28-generic
  linux-image-4.13.0-36-generic linux-image-4.13.0-37-generic
  linux-image-extra-4.10.0-28-generic linux-image-extra-4.13.0-36-generic
  linux-image-extra-4.13.0-37-generic linux-signed-image-4.10.0-28-generic
  linux-signed-image-4.13.0-36-generic linux-signed-image-4.13.0-37-generic
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 37 not upgraded.

But I'm still getting the same import error ImportError: No module named '_tkinter', please install the python3-tk package.

Any suggestions in this regard will be highly appreciated.

Answer 1

When you import matplotlib, it will probably be trying to use the tk backend as the default. If you didn't install tk, or you do not want to use it anywhere else in your project, then a possible solution would be to simply use a different backend:

import matplotlib
matplotlib.use("agg")
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt