Yes, system packages should be managed by a system packager. Unfortunately, for Debian and/or Ubuntu, those packages are often a full version number behind the

Yes, system packages should be managed by a system packager. Unfortunately, for Debian and/or Ubuntu, those packages are often a full version number behind the PyPi version (I'm guessing it's the same for RHL/Fedora). Be very careful using a system packager like apt-get or yum to install a package that is under active development. In that case, it's often better to install from source or use pip/easy_install. But yes, if it's not a system package, don't use sudo for security reasons (although PyPi is pretty safe).