Document tradeoffs of Python distributions

Author: johnthagenCreated Jun 9, 2025Updated Sep 27, 2026
Labelsarea:documentation

As mentioned by @bwoodsend in

The Pyinstaller docs could benefit from a section in the documentation discussing the tradeoffs between different Python distributions and their effect on portability/binary size/etc of Pyinstaller-produced binaries.

Some specific distributions that come to mind

  • python-build-standalone (popularized by uv)
  • deadsnakes PPA
  • System Debian/Ubuntu/RHEL/Rocky Linux
  • pyenv
  • Homebrew
  • Python.org installers
  • Conda
  • Official python container image: https://hub.docker.com/_/python