What it is
Python is a programming language known for readable code and a large standard library. It’s used for scripts and automation, web services, data analysis and machine learning. pip is its package installer: it fetches libraries from the Python Package Index (PyPI).
Why it’s here
- Readable and quick to write. A good first language and a good tool for small jobs.
- Libraries for everything. PyPI has packages for almost any task.
- Many tools need it. A lot of Linux software is written in Python.
On CoreDesktop
Python itself comes with Arch. CoreDesktop adds pip from pacman, along with Python libraries packaged by Arch: Pillow for images, PyGObject for GNOME apps, Pygments for syntax highlighting, and docutils and MyST-Parser for documentation. update keeps them current with the rest of the pacman packages.
Arch doesn’t let pip install into the system Python, so install libraries into a virtual environment for each project, use uv, or install Python apps with pipx.
python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate && pip install requests