If you are a Red Hat or Fedora user, you likely have a program named Yum. If you don't have Yum, you should upgrade to Fedora Core 8, which includes Python 2.5, Yum (plus many other new programs.)

Note that Yum repositories do not cover every combination of operating system and Python distribution. For example, there isn't a handy pre-built setup for Python 2.5 on Fedora Core 6. In many cases, you'll want to do an operating system upgrade in order to introduce a new Python distribution.

If you have an out-of-date Python, you'll have to enter two commands in the Terminal window.

yum upgrade python
yum install tkinter

The first command will upgrade the Python 2.5 distribution. You can use the command "install" instead of "upgrade" in the unlikely event that you somehow have Yum, but don't have Python.

The second command will assure that the extension package named tkinter is part of your Fedora installation. It is not, typically, provided automatically. You'll need this to make use of the IDLE program used extensively in later chapters.