with some products and computer systemsand enclosed with some other python books these tend to lag behind the current release somewhatbut usually not seriously so in additionyou can find python in some free and commercial development bundles at this writingthis alternative distributions category includesactivestate activepython package that combines python with extensions for scientificwindowsand other development needsincluding pywin and the pythonwin ide enthought python distribution combination of python and host of additional libraries and tools oriented toward scientific computing needs portable python blend of python and add-on packages configured to run directly from portable device pythonxy scientific-oriented python distribution based on qt and spyder conceptive python sdk bundle targeted at businessdesktopand database applications pyimsl studio commercial distribution for numerical analysis anaconda python distribution for analysis and visualization of large data sets this set is prone to changeso search the web for details on all of the aboveand others some of these are freesome are notand some have both free and nonfree versions all combine the standard python freely available at finallyif you are interested in alternative python implementationsrun web search to check out jython (the python port to the java environmentand ironpython (python for the #net world)both of which are described in installation of these systems is beyond the scope of this book installation steps once you've downloaded pythonyou need to install it installation steps are very platform-specificbut here are few pointers for the major python platforms (biased in volume toward windowsonly because that is the platform where most python newcomers are likely to encounter the language first)installing the python interpreter