Install Python 2.7 on Ubuntu 10.04

Had to build Python2.7 from source today to get Panda3D to build on my system (yeah... its a convoluted story why I need to do that and cant live with the Python 2.6 which came with Ubuntu)... here are the instructions in brief.

# install the prerequisities

sudo apt-get -y install build-essential
sudo apt-get -y install libreadline5-dev libncursesw5-dev libssl-dev libsqlite3-dev tk-dev libgdbm-dev libc6-dev libbz2-dev

# download the python sources

cd ~/Downloads/
wget http://python.org/ftp/python/2.7.2/Python-2.7.2.tgz

# untar and build
tar -xvf Python-2.7.2.tgz

cd Python-2.7.2/

./configure

make

# alt install so as not to screw up the regular python

sudo make altinstall

# original instructions from
# http://askubuntu.com/questions/101591/how-do-i-install-python-2-7-2-on-10-04