- numpy Getting started with numpy Installation on Linux
- Installing NumPy
- Python and NumPy installation guide
- Recommendations
- Beginning users
- Advanced users
- Conda
- Alternative if you prefer pip/PyPI
- Python package management
- Pip & conda
- Reproducible installs
- NumPy packages & accelerated linear algebra libraries
- Troubleshooting
- How To Install python3-numpy on Ubuntu 22.04
- What is python3-numpy
- Install python3-numpy Using apt-get
- Install python3-numpy Using apt
- Install python3-numpy Using aptitude
- How To Uninstall python3-numpy on Ubuntu 22.04
- Uninstall python3-numpy And Its Dependencies
- Remove python3-numpy Configurations and Data
- Remove python3-numpy configuration, data, and all of its dependencies
- References
- Summary
numpy Getting started with numpy Installation on Linux
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
PDF — Download numpy for free
Installing NumPy
The only prerequisite for installing NumPy is Python itself. If you don’t have Python yet and want the simplest way to get started, we recommend you use the Anaconda Distribution — it includes Python, NumPy, and many other commonly used packages for scientific computing and data science.
NumPy can be installed with conda , with pip , with a package manager on macOS and Linux, or from source. For more detailed instructions, consult our Python and NumPy installation guide below.
If you use conda , you can install NumPy from the defaults or conda-forge channels:
# Best practice, use an environment rather than install in the base env conda create -n my-env conda activate my-env # If you want to install from conda-forge conda config --env --add channels conda-forge # The actual install command conda install numpy
If you use pip , you can install NumPy with:
Also when using pip, it’s good practice to use a virtual environment — see Reproducible Installs below for why, and this guide for details on using virtual environments.
Python and NumPy installation guide
Installing and managing packages in Python is complicated, there are a number of alternative solutions for most tasks. This guide tries to give the reader a sense of the best (or most popular) solutions, and give clear recommendations. It focuses on users of Python, NumPy, and the PyData (or numerical computing) stack on common operating systems and hardware.
Recommendations
We’ll start with recommendations based on the user’s experience level and operating system of interest. If you’re in between “beginning” and “advanced”, please go with “beginning” if you want to keep things simple, and with “advanced” if you want to work according to best practices that go a longer way in the future.
Beginning users
On all of Windows, macOS, and Linux:
- Install Anaconda (it installs all packages you need and all other tools mentioned below).
- For writing and executing code, use notebooks in JupyterLab for exploratory and interactive computing, and Spyder or Visual Studio Code for writing scripts and packages.
- Use Anaconda Navigator to manage your packages and start JupyterLab, Spyder, or Visual Studio Code.
Advanced users
Conda
- Install Miniforge.
- Keep the base conda environment minimal, and use one or more conda environments to install the package you need for the task or project you’re working on.
Alternative if you prefer pip/PyPI
For users who know, from personal preference or reading about the main differences between conda and pip below, they prefer a pip/PyPI-based solution, we recommend:
- Install Python from python.org, Homebrew, or your Linux package manager.
- Use Poetry as the most well-maintained tool that provides a dependency resolver and environment management capabilities in a similar fashion as conda does.
Python package management
Managing packages is a challenging problem, and, as a result, there are lots of tools. For web and general purpose Python development there’s a whole host of tools complementary with pip. For high-performance computing (HPC), Spack is worth considering. For most NumPy users though, conda and pip are the two most popular tools.
Pip & conda
The two main tools that install Python packages are pip and conda . Their functionality partially overlaps (e.g. both can install numpy ), however, they can also work together. We’ll discuss the major differences between pip and conda here — this is important to understand if you want to manage packages effectively.
The first difference is that conda is cross-language and it can install Python, while pip is installed for a particular Python on your system and installs other packages to that same Python install only. This also means conda can install non-Python libraries and tools you may need (e.g. compilers, CUDA, HDF5), while pip can’t.
The second difference is that pip installs from the Python Packaging Index (PyPI), while conda installs from its own channels (typically “defaults” or “conda-forge”). PyPI is the largest collection of packages by far, however, all popular packages are available for conda as well.
The third difference is that conda is an integrated solution for managing packages, dependencies and environments, while with pip you may need another tool (there are many!) for dealing with environments or complex dependencies.
Reproducible installs
As libraries get updated, results from running your code can change, or your code can break completely. It’s important to be able to reconstruct the set of packages and versions you’re using. Best practice is to:
- use a different environment per project you’re working on,
- record package names and versions using your package installer; each has its own metadata format for this:
- Conda: conda environments and environment.yml
- Pip: virtual environments and requirements.txt
- Poetry: virtual environments and pyproject.toml
NumPy packages & accelerated linear algebra libraries
NumPy doesn’t depend on any other Python packages, however, it does depend on an accelerated linear algebra library — typically Intel MKL or OpenBLAS. Users don’t have to worry about installing those (they’re automatically included in all NumPy install methods). Power users may still want to know the details, because the used BLAS can affect performance, behavior and size on disk:
- The NumPy wheels on PyPI, which is what pip installs, are built with OpenBLAS. The OpenBLAS libraries are included in the wheel. This makes the wheel larger, and if a user installs (for example) SciPy as well, they will now have two copies of OpenBLAS on disk.
- In the conda defaults channel, NumPy is built against Intel MKL. MKL is a separate package that will be installed in the users’ environment when they install NumPy.
- In the conda-forge channel, NumPy is built against a dummy “BLAS” package. When a user installs NumPy from conda-forge, that BLAS package then gets installed together with the actual library — this defaults to OpenBLAS, but it can also be MKL (from the defaults channel), or even BLIS or reference BLAS.
- The MKL package is a lot larger than OpenBLAS, it’s about 700 MB on disk while OpenBLAS is about 30 MB.
- MKL is typically a little faster and more robust than OpenBLAS.
Besides install sizes, performance and robustness, there are two more things to consider:
- Intel MKL is not open source. For normal use this is not a problem, but if a user needs to redistribute an application built with NumPy, this could be an issue.
- Both MKL and OpenBLAS will use multi-threading for function calls like np.dot , with the number of threads being determined by both a build-time option and an environment variable. Often all CPU cores will be used. This is sometimes unexpected for users; NumPy itself doesn’t auto-parallelize any function calls. It typically yields better performance, but can also be harmful — for example when using another level of parallelization with Dask, scikit-learn or multiprocessing.
Troubleshooting
If your installation fails with the message below, see Troubleshooting ImportError.
IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ THIS FOR ADVICE ON HOW TO SOLVE THIS ISSUE! Importing the numpy c-extensions failed. This error can happen for different reasons, often due to issues with your setup.
How To Install python3-numpy on Ubuntu 22.04
In this tutorial we learn how to install python3-numpy on Ubuntu 22.04.
What is python3-numpy
Numpy contains a powerful N-dimensional array object, sophisticated (broadcasting) functions, tools for integrating C/C++ and Fortran code, and useful linear algebra, Fourier transform, and random number capabilities.
Numpy replaces the python-numeric and python-numarray modules which are now deprecated and shouldn’t be used except to support older software.
This package contains Numpy for Python 3.
There are three methods to install python3-numpy on Ubuntu 22.04. We can use apt-get , apt and aptitude . In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.
Install python3-numpy Using apt-get
Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.
After updating apt database, We can install python3-numpy using apt-get by running the following command:
Install python3-numpy Using apt
Update apt database with apt using the following command.
After updating apt database, We can install python3-numpy using apt by running the following command:
Install python3-numpy Using aptitude
If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Ubuntu. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.
After updating apt database, We can install python3-numpy using aptitude by running the following command:
How To Uninstall python3-numpy on Ubuntu 22.04
To uninstall only the python3-numpy package we can use the following command:
Uninstall python3-numpy And Its Dependencies
To uninstall python3-numpy and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Ubuntu 22.04, we can use the command below:
Remove python3-numpy Configurations and Data
To remove python3-numpy configuration and data from Ubuntu 22.04 we can use the following command:
Remove python3-numpy configuration, data, and all of its dependencies
We can use the following command to remove python3-numpy configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:
References
Summary
In this tutorial we learn how to install python3-numpy package on Ubuntu 22.04 using different package management tools: apt , apt-get and aptitude .