python is cross-platform programming languagewhich means it runs on all the major operating systems any python program you write should run on any modern computer that has python installed howeverthe methods for setting up python on different operating systems vary slightly in this section you'll learn how to set up python and run the hello world program on your own system you'll first check whether python is installed on your system and install it if it' not then you'll install simple text editor and save an empty python file called hello_world py finallyyou'll run the hello world program and troubleshoot anything that didn' work 'll walk you through this process for each operating systemso you'll have beginner-friendly python programming environment python on linux linux systems are designed for programmingso python is already installed on most linux computers the people who write and maintain linux expect you to do your own programming at some point and encourage you to do so for this reason there' very little you have to install and very few settings you have to change to start programming checking your version of python open terminal window by running the terminal application on your system (in ubuntuyou can press ctrl alt-tto find out whether python is installedenter python with lowercase you should see output telling you which version of python is installed and prompt where you can start entering python commandslike thispython python (defaultmar : : [gcc on linux type "help""copyright""creditsor "licensefor more information this output tells you that python is currently the default version of python installed on this computer when you've seen this outputpress ctrl - or enter exit(to leave the python prompt and return to terminal prompt to check for python you might have to specify that versionso even if the output displayed python as the default versiontry the command python python python (defaultsep : : [gcc on linux type "help""copyright""creditsor "licensefor more information getting started