'Python Upgrading leads to terminal... not opening

I just upgraded python in ubuntu to python 3.10 to use the match/case statements, but now, my terminal won't open. Anywhere. I tired opening it on Visual Studio Code, but it says the path does not exist. Gnome terminal and terminator won't even give any feedback. I am using Ubuntu 20.04 with i3wm, my shell is zsh, and here are the commands i used (i modified them from this site and this site):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt install python3.10
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python python /usr/bin/python3.10 1
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python3 python3 /usr/bin/python3.10 1
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python python /usr/bin/python2.6 10
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python3 python3 /usr/bin/python2.6 10
sudo update-alternatives --config python
sudo update-alternatives --config python3

For what I remember my previous python version was somewhere around 3.7.

If you prefer, here are the specs from above:

  • OS: Ubuntu 20.04
  • Shell: zsh (oh-my-zsh)
  • WM: i3
  • Terminal: gnome-terminal

Important: Please remember I do not have access to a terminal. I have still not tried recovery mode, but if you have a non-termianl based solution, it is preferred.

pythonlinuxubuntuterminalzsh


Solution 1:[1]

Just found a way to undo it. If you encounter the same problem, here is what I did:

Ctrl+Alt+Fn and a few F buttons (F1, F2, F3...) until I got to a tty menu. I logged in as myself (not root), and ran sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python3 python3 /usr/bin/python3.8 1 to make the default python 2.8 with sudo update-alternatives --config python3 again. Then it worked properly.

Solution 2:[2]

I ran exactly into the same problem. I found the answer here.

At first, I tried to simply open the gnome-terminal file without a terminal and change it, but it didn't work, because using a GUI I had no sudo permissions. So the workaround that worked for me and I expect that may work for you, was to open the file with VSCode and then used the VSCode integrated terminal to run the following command:

sudo nano /usr/bin/gnome-terminal

Of course you don't have to use nano, you could use vim or something else. Anyway, once there, you can change the first line of the file, which is a comment, from

#!/usr/bin/python3

to

#!/usr/bin/python3.8

Ubuntu 20.04 is well compatible with python3.8, so that's why I suggested you putting python3.8 there but you could surely test if some other version works.

This is not a way to go back to python3.8. You will still have the add-ons of python3.10.

Sources

This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Source: Stack Overflow

Solution Source
Solution 1 Rafael Monteiro
Solution 2 Cayo Rodrigues

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