Is it really so difficult to enable Tkinter?

[Bart Meerdink]

(Warning: I'm a bit of a Python-newbie)

After following the standard configure/make/make install procedure for
python 2.2.1c1  (newer is always better, you know) on SuSE Linux, I
found that tkinter would not work ("no module named _tkinter").

I tried again, installed the tck/tk 8.3.3 headers, did configure,
edited Modules/Setup (paragraph about tkinter, guessing what I should
change there), crossed my fingers, and continued with make and (as
root) make install. Success!

But I cannot believe this is the intended way.

And sadly, the nice ActiveState rpm distribution, which worked out of
the box, seems not to be maintained anymore.

One more question: is it on purpose that idle is left out?

Bart Meerdink