The literal only thing you need to understand is “sys.path”. If you inspect this in a shell you will know what you’re up against. Python is all literally just directories. It’s so easy and yet people get so bent out of shape over it.

Create a venv, activate it, and use pip as normal. If you ever run into issues, look at sys.path. That’s it.

Is it because people have to use venvs that people complain about it?

I’ll admit being able to install via an OS package manager, vs pip, vs anaconda etc etc can be confusing, but is any of that really Python (the language)’s fault?

I don’t know the -u flag on pip, never used it can’t find it in the docs.

With a virtual environment sudo is not needed. Assuming you created it, and/or it is owned by you.

Virtual environments are just directories on disk. They are not complex.

I don’t use conda because it’s never felt even remotely necessary to me.

pip and a requirements file is all you need.