Can pip install packages for all users (on a Linux system)?

[Stephan Houben]

Op 2018-07-24, John Ladasky schreef <john_ladasky at sbcglobal.net>:
> I believe that I now have tensorflow 1.8 installed twice on my system,
> once for each user.  If anyone can share how to convince pip to behave
> like Synaptic, I would appreciate it.  Thanks.

I would recommend against using pip to install packages into the system
Python. The reason is that you may get into a conflict with the package
manager. You can try to be careful and not install tensorflow using
Synaptic, but once you install some other package which happens to
depend on tensorflow, you will start getting package manager conflicts.

An alternative is to install Python yourself (from source, without the package
manager) in, say, /opt/python. You are then in splendid isolation from
the package manager and can install any version of Python and tensorflow
you desire.

Stephan