What is the difference between installing a package using pip vs. apt-get?

python linux ubuntu pip apt-get
Mridang Agarwalla picture Mridang Agarwalla · Jul 29, 2011 · Viewed 17.6k times · Source

I'm trying to deploy a Django site on an Ubuntu machine. I need to install Psycopg2 and PIL but it seems that I'm able to install them using either apt-get or using pip. Is there a difference in installing by the two methods? I know that using pip, I'm able to install it into a virtual environment but with apt-get it installs in the global python environment.

Answer

agf picture agf · Jul 29, 2011

You probably already know the benefits of apt-get. Automatic update notifications, other apt-installed packages that need those tools know they're installed, etc.

With pip, you know you're getting the latest version at the time you install it, you can install to a non-default version of Python, and you can install to a virtualenv.

If you don't need any of the features pip gives you, and you don't routinely have to install other Python packages which aren't available over APT, use the APT versions.

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