Before we jump in to the main chapter, it is necessary to install the following packages.
In this book we will use Python Version 2.6, or to be more specific, Version 2.6.4. It can be downloaded from the following location: http://python.org/download/releases/
For Windows, just download and install the platform-specific binary distribution of Python 2.6.4.
For other platforms, such as Linux, Python is probably already installed on your machine. If the installed version is not 2.6, build and install it from the source distribution. If you are using a package manager on a Linux system, search for Python 2.6. It is likely that you will find the Python distribution there. Then, for instance, Ubuntu users can install Python from the command prompt as:
$sudo apt-get python2.6
Note that for this, you must have administrative permission on the machine on which you are installing Python.