numpy Getting started with numpy Installation on Linux

Example

NumPy is available in the default repositories of most popular Linux distributions and can be installed in the same way that packages in a Linux distribution are usually installed.

Some Linux distributions have different NumPy packages for Python 2.x and Python 3.x. In Ubuntu and Debian, install numpy at the system level using the APT package manager:

sudo apt-get install python-numpy  
sudo apt-get install python3-numpy  

For other distributions, use their package managers, like zypper (Suse), yum (Fedora) etc.

numpy can also be installed with Python's package manager pip for Python 2 and with pip3 for Python 3:

pip install numpy  # install numpy for Python 2
pip3 install numpy  # install numpy for Python 3

pip is available in the default repositories of most popular Linux distributions and can be installed for Python 2 and Python 3 using:

sudo apt-get install python-pip  # pip for Python 2
sudo apt-get install python3-pip  # pip for Python 3

After installation, use pip for Python 2 and pip3 for Python 3 to use pip for installing Python packages. But note that you might need to install many dependencies, which are required to build numpy from source (including development-packages, compilers, fortran etc).

Besides installing numpy at the system level, it is also common (perhaps even highly recommended) to install numpy in virtual environments using popular Python packages such as virtualenv. In Ubuntu, virtualenv can be installed using:

sudo apt-get install virtualenv

Then, create and activate a virtualenv for either Python 2 or Python 3 and then use pip to install numpy:

virtualenv venv  # create virtualenv named venv for Python 2
virtualenv venv -p python3  # create virtualenv named venv for Python 3
source venv/bin/activate  # activate virtualenv named venv
pip install numpy  # use pip for Python 2 and Python 3; do not use pip3 for Python3