Installing NLTK on Linux

In this recipe, we will see how to install NLTK on Linux. Before proceeding with the installation, let's consider the version of Python we're going to use. There are two versions or flavors of Python, namely Python 2.7.x and Python 3.x. Although the latest version, Python 3.x, appears to be the better choice, for scientific, numeric, or data analysis work, Python 2.7 is recommended.

Getting ready

To step through this recipe, you need Ubuntu 14.04 (Linux flavor) installed on the machine. Python comes pre-installed. The python --version command gives the version of the Python installed. If the version seems to be 2.6.x, upgrade it to Python 2.7 as follows:

    sudo apt-get install python2.7

How to do it…

Let's see the installation process for NLTK:

1. Once the Python 2.7.x version is available, install NLTK as follows:

         sudo pip install -U nltk
   

2. The preceding installation may throw an error such as the following:

          Could not find any downloads that satisfy the requirement...