Master Linux Python Virtual Environments with virtualenv & virtualenvwrapper

Introduction

Hello everyone, this article shows how to use Python virtual environments on Linux from scratch.

Why a virtual environment?

Virtual environments isolate third‑party packages so different projects can use different versions of Django or other libraries without conflict.

Django 1.5 (old project)

Django 1.8 (recent project)

Django 2.0+ (new project)

Linux environment overview

The examples run on Ubuntu 18.04 with the system Python 3.6.9 and the latest pip.

Update pip with:

sudo python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip

Installation

Install virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper:

pip install virtualenv

pip install virtualenvwrapper

Configuration

Create a directory for environments: mkdir $HOME/.virtualenvs or mkdir .virtualenvs Make the directory visible: ls -al Find Python and virtualenvwrapper locations:

which python3

which virtualenvwrapper.sh

Edit .bashrc to add:

export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenvs
source ~/.local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON=/usr/bin/python3

Then reload:

source .bashrc

Common commands

mkvirtualenv spider

– create and activate a new environment named spider. deactivate – exit the current environment. workon or lsvirtualenv – list all environments. rmvirtualenv flask – delete the flask environment. workon flask – switch to the flask environment.

Tips: workon can switch environments without deactivating first, and tab‑completion works for virtual‑env commands.

Conclusion

The article demonstrated how to set up and manage Python virtual environments on Linux, providing essential commands and configuration steps for isolated development.