what is missing that prevents my IDLE from working?

Question

Installed Ubuntu 10.10 and Python 2.5.5. IDLE did not start from the terminal so I went into the Python interpreter and did "import _tkinter". The package was not found. After searching a bit, I found that Ubuntu/debian might not include _tkinter so I proceeded to "sudo apt-get install python-tk" as per my searches.

Still the interpreter cannot find _tkinter. What next?

Answer 1

There's an IDLE package in the Ubuntu software center that you can install. Install that and IDLE will work.

UPDATE

It is indeed in the Ubuntu software center on Ubuntu 10.10. Evidence:

Answer 2

Use Synaptic Package Manager (System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager). Search for "idle".

Answer 3

The problem has been solved in another thread. The solution is to install tk-dev before installing Python 2.5.5 (on Ubuntu 10.10 which came with Python 2.6).

TK_LIBRARY and TCL_LIBRARY environment variables on Ubuntu