Installing SciPy from source on Linux

Since Linux is an umbrella name for a number of distinct operating system configurations, there is no binary distribution that fits all possible Linux flavors. 

All modern distributions of Linux come with Python pre-installed. In this recipe, we describe a setup procedure for a local Python 3 installation from source that works on two of the most popular Linux distributions, Ubuntu and Debian. The installation will be located in the user's home directory, and will not conflict with any pre-installed version of Python that exists in the system.