interactive mode python has support for an interactive mode which allows interactive testing and debugging of snippets of code portable python can run on wide variety of hardware platforms and has the same interface on all platforms extendable we can add low-level modules to the python interpreter these modules enable programmers to add to or customize their tools to be more efficient databases python provides interfaces to all major commercial databases gui programming python supports gui applications that can be created and ported to many system callslibraries and windows systemssuch as windows mfcmacintoshand the window system of unix scalable python provides better structure and support for large programs than shell scripting important features of python let us now consider the following important features of pythonit supports functional and structured programming methods as well as oop it can be used as scripting language or can be compiled to byte-code for building large applications it provides very high-level dynamic data types and supports dynamic type checking it supports automatic garbage collection it can be easily integrated with cc++comactivexcorbaand java installing python python distribution is available for large number of platforms you need to download only the binary code applicable for your platform and install python if the binary code for your platform is not availableyou need compiler to compile the source code manually compiling the source code offers more flexibility in terms of choice of features that you require in your installation here is quick overview of installing python on various platforms unix and linux installation follow these steps to install python on unix/linux machine open web browser and go to follow the link to download zipped source code available for unix/linux download and extract files editing the modules/setup file if you want to customize some options run /configure script