I don't think it's that catastrophic. I think they should have forced a hard cut with Python 3, but adoption there was hard enough already so maybe they made t

I don't think it's that catastrophic. I think they should have forced a hard cut with Python 3, but adoption there was hard enough already so maybe they made the right choice. Another part of the issue is that it makes system packages worse. The system Python works fine if, and only if, you use some kind of external package manager. Then ensuring that the libraries you have work with all the applications you use is up to the package manager, which works okay. If we burn that down and force virtualenvs, system packages become less optimal. Packages from package managers will either have to bundle their own libraries (meaning duplication and larger package sizes), or we have to have a "system virtualenv" where we manage those packages. A "system virtualenv" is basically what we have now, except there would be more steps to actually be able to use it. What we really need is for OS package maintainers to take a hard line that people should not be installing packages into the system Python without using apt/pacman/yum/dnf/whatever. Attempting to run "sudo pip install $thing" should print an error like: "Installing packages into the system Python without using yum is unsupported. You should use a virtualenv or alternative tooling to prevent potentially system-breaking incompatibilities. See https://example.documentation.site.com https://example.documentation.site.com for more information. Add the --i-dont-care-if-im-unsupported flag if you're sure you know what you're doing and want to proceed anyways." And I really think it should come with a scary and long flag like that. It empowers a lot of engineers to make a case that they need to get away from that pattern quickly. Pip is packaged (at least I know it is for Ubuntu), so the package manager can definitely add code for that. I don't think we need to stop people from shooting themselves in the foot, but there are not nearly enough warnings that you shouldn't be doing this. I don't think there are any currently, even though I think it's basically unanimous at this point that it's technically better to use virtualenvs. I don't even think it's something that linters check for.