> the selling point with the most traction is that you don't already need a working python install to get UV. And once you have UV, you can just go!
I still genuinely do not understand why this is a serious selling point. Linux systems commonly already provide (and heavily depend upon) a Python distribution which is perfectly suitable for creating virtual environments, and Python on Windows is provided by a traditional installer following the usual idioms for Windows end users. (To install uv on Windows I would be expected to use the PowerShell equivalent of a curl | sh trick; many people trying to learn to use Python on Windows have to be taught what cmd.exe is, never mind PowerShell.) If anything, new Python-on-Windows users are getting tripped up by the moving target of attempts to make it even easier (in part because of things Microsoft messed up when trying to coordinate with the CPython team; see for example https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58754860/cmd-opens-windo... when it originally happened in Python 3.7).
> If I had a dollar for every time I've helped somebody untangle the mess of python environment libraries created by an undocumented mix of python delivered through the distributions package management versus native pip versus manually installed...
Sure, but that has everything to do with not understanding (or caring about) virtual environments (which are fundamental, and used by uv under the hood because there is really no viable alternative), and nothing to do with getting Python in the first place. I also don't know what you mean about "native pip" here; it seems like you're conflating the Python installation process with the package installation process.
Linux systems commonly already provide an outdated system Python you don’t want to use, and it can’t be used to create a venv of a version you want to use. A single Python version for the entire system fundamentally doesn’t work for many people thanks to shitty compat story in the vast ecosystem.
Even languages with great compat story are moving to support multi-toolchains natively. For instance, go 1.22 on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is outdated, but it will automatically download the 1.25 toolchain when it seems go 1.25.0 in go.mod.