A comprehensive eco system for scientific computing with Python used to be quite a challenge to install on a computer, especially for newcomers. This problem is more or less solved today. There are several options for getting easy access to Python and the most important packages for scientific computations, so the biggest issue for a newcomer is to make a proper choice. An overview of the possibilities together with my own recommendations appears next.
This chapter is taken from the book A Primer on Scientific Programming with Python by H. P. Langtangen, 5th edition, Springer, 2016.