Linux Mint Noob Help?

[loveboobayes]

Hello, can someone please help with Linux Mint install?

I can't seem to figure this out. It is my understanding that Linux has Python built into it already. However, it does not have PIP. I tried installing PIP manually but apparently if you run PIP it can break your device. So I uninstalled PIP. The alternative seems to be to run PIP in a virtual environment, but I have no idea what that entails as far as implementing or security.

The snap store is also disabled by default and I do not want to enable it or use it just for this one program.

Is there any other way to get this working? I do not want to risk breaking my machine or giving the program complete control over my machine (though that may be how it works by default, I have no clue so please forgive me).

[mikf]

You can install gallery-dl in a venv like this:

$ python3 -m venv gdl

§ ./gdl/bin/python -m pip install gallery-dl
Collecting gallery-dl
...
Successfully installed certifi-2025.4.26 charset-normalizer-3.4.2 gallery-dl-1.29.5 idna-3.10 requests-2.32.3 urllib3-2.4.0

$ ./gdl/bin/gallery-dl -v
[gallery-dl][debug] Version 1.29.5

You can then add a symlink with ln -s or an alias in your .bashrc to to be able to access ./gdl/bin/gallery-dl more easily and invoke it with just gallery-dl.

snap store

I recommend not using snaps if at all possible.

[loveboobayes]

This works! Thank you much!