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Comment by gshulegaard | Hacker News Reader

What I said was the default version of Python is old on most distributions.

For example, CentOS 6 ships with Python 2.6 out of the box. Even faster moving distros (like Ubuntu) are still trying to make Python 3 the default (although at least Ubuntu ships with both 2.7 and 3.4+ out of the box).

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What do you mean, default? "/usr/bin/python" symlinked to "/usr/bin/python3" instead of "/usr/bin/python2"?

Installed by default.

As the GP said, Python3 is installed by default on any big distro for 5-10 years already.

It's not the default because /bin/python is synlinked to python2. You have to explicitly run it.

> Python3 is installed by default on any big distro for 5-10 years already.

That's not very true.

- Most BSDs and MacOS still don't have it installed by default.

- RHEL/CentOS still don't have it installed by default.

- Ubuntu LTS didn't get it by default until 14.04. (3 years ago) (mainline ubuntu got it in 13.04, 4 years ago)

Isn't Python 3 installed by default on most distros, as well as Python 2?

No one should be using CentOS 6 in 2017, if you think python is your problem and you're running CentOS 6 you need to take a good hard look at your platform.

Centos 6 is 7 years old, if you are still using that it is unfortunately your problem. It's not hard to write "python3" on a modern dist.

Ubuntu has 3.5 and 3.6 is easily installable though not yet default 3.x.

Just because an operating system is "old" is not a reason to change it... Also it is still supported: https://wiki.centos.org/FAQ/General#head-fe8a0be91ee3e7dea81...

Yes, it is his problem. And he's solving it by using python 2. Sometimes you have to use older distributions.

You think someone is going to start a new project and use a 7 year old OS? I don't think it's "unfortunately my problem" when biz/client reqs for a 7 yo OS are completely out of my hands, unless of course the mindset is "use Python 3 or die trying".

And the other 96% of us can move on, no need to act like you're the majority.

Py 2.6 is already EOL for almost five years.

>no need to act like you're the majority

Is he making that assumption, or are you?

Let me reiterate, a 7 year old version of EOL software. Yes.

https://ius.io

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