Developers are working on removing Python 2 in Ubuntu 20.04

Python 2 has reached the EOL phase in early 2020, and developers at Ubuntu and Debian continue to work to remove Python 2 from the operating system, continue to migrate packages to Python 3 or remove maintenance package.

Matthias Klose, the developer of the Ubuntu/Debian project, has been coordinating most Python 2 removals for Ubuntu and Debian and has provided another update on this issue. As of today, the libpython-dev, python, python-minimal and other packages are no longer available as part of the python-defaults package in the Ubuntu 20.04 archive.

Although python2-minimal and other python2 * packages are used to satisfy the dependencies of the remaining packages that are not yet compatible with Python 3, these packages are no longer stored in the Ubuntu “Focal” archive. A new python-pointing-to-python2 package that points python to Python 2 is expected to be available in the Focal repository.

The ultimate goal is to completely remove Python 2 in time for the Ubuntu 20.04 release in April, as this is a long-term support release that requires years of maintenance. However, some Python 2 packages that do not provide Python 3 support remain in the universe archive.