I am about to start learning to program in Python. After I installed IDLE3 via "sudo apt-get install idle3", and python3-pip via "sudo apt-get install python3-pip", I cannot seem to get IDLE to work.

When I run IDLE, I am greeted with the following error:

"IDLE's subprocess didn't make connection. Either IDLE can't start a subprocess or personal firewall software is blocking the connection."

After I click "OK", IDLE shuts down.

I have tried figuring out how to troubleshoot this error, but it seems I keep getting three recommendations:

(1) Delete all .py and pyc files in a specific directory (?) ← this seems to be coming from Mac and Win users
(2) Move Python to a different place ← Win users?
(3) Shut down all running python processes ← none running (= none shown in htop)

I have tried to make sense of the first two approaches in KDE, but I cannot seem to find any python programs to delete (not sure where and how to look), and I would also not know where and how to move Python.

Since I now seem to have two instances (?) or versions (?) of IDLE installed—I get both "IDLE" and "IDLE (using Python-3.5)" in my applications menu—, I am assuming it might have something to do with that.

Was tempted to remove idle3, but not sure about the associated packages (blt idle-python3.5 python3-tk tk8.6-blt2.5), so I did not remove anything lest I mess up my system.

Same with python3-pip, which not only introduced new packages (libexpat1-dev libpython3-dev libpython3.5-dev python-pip-whl python3-dev python3-pip python3-setuptools python3-wheel python3.5-dev), but also upgraded some (libpython3.5 libpython3.5-minimal libpython3.5-stdlib python3.5 python3.5-minimal).

I am running KDE Neon LTS 5.12.

Any help, any pointers as to how to troubleshoot this issue would be greatly appreciated.

Adam

When you remove the IDLE packages, it should suggest to remove the other packages that it pulled in as part of previously installing them, which should not break your system. (the updated packages should probably have been updated anyway).

As for getting started in python development, I find kwrite to be a reasonable editor for most simple coding tasks such as writing simple stuff in python. (I've personally never liked IDLE much, but admit that it is a pretty good python editor). For running python code, you can always just pull up konsole and either invoke: python myscript.py, or run python itself to open an interactive python session.

Thank you, airdrik! Will try removing IDLE that way and also look into alternatives such as kwrite. Picked up IDLE since the book I am working with goes that route, but now that you have mentioned it, I can see that it is only one of the multiple viable options.

Thank you, again!