In this recipe, we will see how to install NLTK on Linux. Before proceeding with the installation, let's consider the version of Python we're going to use. There are two versions or flavors of Python, namely Python 2.7.x and Python 3.x. Although the latest version, Python 3.x, appears to be the better choice, for scientific, numeric, or data analysis work, Python 2.7 is recommended.
To step through this recipe, you need Ubuntu 14.04 (Linux flavor) installed on the machine. Python comes pre-installed. The python --version
command gives the version of the Python installed. If the version seems to be 2.6.x, upgrade it to Python 2.7 as follows:
sudo apt-get install python2.7