What do you mean by piecing together a python install? Most linux should have one pre-installed or easily available via the package manager. After that venvs and pip seem to be generally enough for most tasks.

I've been using Python for about 6 years, my last company wrote it's core commercial product exclusively in python. I've never used venvs, but I've yet to run into a situation where virtualenv (maybe with virtualwrappers as sugar), and pip + requirements.txt haven't been able to handle even fairly complex install situations.

My workplace is a Windows shop. I'm multi platform, but by and large the folks using Linux don't need my help. ;-) So when I help people its almost always on Windows.

Packaging Python applications that are outside of containerized apps can be a headache. You can't assume that the system's Python suits your needs, or even that Python versions in package repositories will, either.

A big pain point still remains when it comes to packaging and distribution.

It's not insurmountable, but if you're used to compiling and/or cross-compiling and shipping binaries, shipping Python apps can be headache inducing. The headaches increase when you're working with Windows or macOS, or using bleeding edge Python versions.

That said, for 99% of Python apps out there, the default tooling should be absolutely fine for packaging and distribution, as should 3rd party solutions like PyInstaller or Nuitka.

Oh of course, packaging python apps for final distribution is a different matter. I was assuming they were talking about the process of setting up a dev environment not deployment.

Oh yeah, 99.999% that's the case for dev environments. The only issue I've seen is that some versions of Linux distros have Python shipping with Tk and cryptography support in separate packages to be installed from repositories, where they might be installed by default on other distros, or are just included with the Python package.