TensorFlow is a free and open source platform for machine learning built by Google. It is used by a number of organizations including Twitter, PayPal, Intel, Lenovo, and Airbus. TensorFlow can be installed system-wide, in a Python virtual environment or as a Docker container using pip.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo’ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step by step installation TensorFlow on a Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic Beaver) server.
Install TensorFlow on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver
Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running these following apt-get commands in the terminal.
sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade
Step 2. Installing Python 3 and venv.
Run the commands below to install Python and Python venv:
sudo apt install python3 python3-pip python3-venv
To verify what version of Python is installed, run the commands below:
python3 -V
Step 3. Creating a Virtual Environment.
Now, we create a new directory for the TensorFlow project and navigate into it:
mkdir my_tensorflow cd my_tensorflow
Once inside the directory, run the following command to create the virtual environment:
python3 -m venv venv
To start using this virtual environment, you need to activate it by running the activate script:
source venv/bin/activate
Step 4. Installing TensorFlow on Ubuntu.
Now that the virtual environment is activated, it’s time to install the TensorFlow package:
pip install --upgrade tensorflow
To verify the installation use the following command which will print the TensorFlow version:
python -c 'import tensorflow as tf; print(tf.__version__)'
Congratulation’s! You have successfully installed TensorFlow. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing TensorFlow on Ubuntu 18.04 systems. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official TensorFlow website.