installation and configuration this appendix provides additional installation and configuration details as resource for people new to these topics it' located here because not all readers will need to deal with these subjects up front because it covers some peripheral topics such as environment variables and command-line argumentsthoughthis material probably merits at least quick scan for most readers installing the python interpreter because you need the python interpreter to run python scriptsthe first step in using python is usually installing python unless one is already available on your machineyou'll need to fetchinstalland possibly configure recent version of python on your computer you'll only need to do this once per machineand if you will be running frozen binary (described in or self-installing systemyour setup tasks may be trivial or null is python already presentbefore you do anything elsecheck whether you already have recent python on your machine if you are working on linuxmac os xor some unix systemspython is probably already installed on your computerthough it may be one or two releases behind the cutting edge here' how to checkon windows and earliercheck whether there is python entry in the start button' all programs menu (at the bottom left of the screenon windows look for python in start screen tileyour search toolthe "all appsdisplay on your start screenor file explorer in desktop mode (more on windows in an upcoming sidebaron mac os xopen terminal window (applications-utilities-terminaland type python at the prompt pythonidleand its tkinter gui toolkit are standard components of this system