Especially in the case of a python virtual environment, "conda" solves everything ultra cleanly (regardless of whether it's debian, fedore, arch or Windows and

Especially in the case of a python virtual environment, "conda" solves everything ultra cleanly (regardless of whether it's debian, fedore, arch or Windows and probably macOS too though I didn't try). It provides any version of Python, regardless of what your base system has (or lacks). It also provides an isolated gcc and many other packages; and you can still "pip install" inside it if the package you need is not conda-native, and conda will track it just as well. Conda is really underappreciated.