if your operating system is ubuntu or linuxstart idle by opening terminal window and then type --idle |and press enter you may also be able to click on applications at the top of the screenand then select programmingthen idle the window that appears when you first run idle is called the interactive shell shell is program that lets you type instructions into the computer the python shell lets you type python instructionsand the shell sends these instructions to the python interpreter to perform installing pygame pygame does not come with python like pythonpygame is available for free you will have to download and install pygamewhich is as easy as downloading and installing the python interpreter in web browsergo to the url link on the left side of the web site this book assumes you have the windows operating systembut pygame works the same for every operating system you need to download the pygame installer for your operating system and the version of python you have installed you do not want to download the --source|for pygamebut rather the pygame --binary|for your operating system for windowsdownload the pygamewin -py msi file (this is pygame for python on windows if you installed different version of python (such as or download the msi file for your version of python the current version of pygame at the time this book was written is if you see newer version on the websitedownload and install the newer pygame for mac os xdownload the zip or dmg file for the version of python you have and run it for linuxopen terminal and run --sudo apt-get install python-pygame|on windowsdouble click on the downloaded file to install pygame to check that pygame is install correctlytype the following into the interactive shellimport pygame