Standalone Python applications in Linux

Question

How can I distribute a standalone Python application in Linux?

I think I can take for granted the presence of a recent Python interpreter in any modern distribution.

Answer 1

I think you can fairly safely take for granted python support on most modern Linux distributions - for the ones without it as long as a sane error message is given, users should probably be able to work how to get it on their own (you can use a simple bash startup script for this):

#!/bin/bash
if [ -e /usr/bin/python ]
then
    echo "Python found!"
else
    echo "Python missing!"
fi