I know Python versions and dependency management is always awkward for people who don't use it every day, but you should almost never use the bundled version of Python on the system, and instead pin a dedicated version for whatever you're developing. And use a virtual environment. uv solves all of this.

> may as well just get them to install 3.15

Exactly. If the project you're trying to run needs a certain version of Python, it's no concern of the system that you're running on, it's a concern of the environment you're running in.

C build environments and linked libraries don't do this, and it's one of the reasons why I am a fan of isolated Python environments. You can't get into dependency conflict resolution hell if the dependencies are defined by a single system.