[kaashif]

What? Why? How?

I always use the system Python plus virtualenv and that works fine, it's certainly never broken my system...

I don't even know by what mechanism that breakage would happen.

[w0m]

'sudo pip install <something huge with a ton of deps>' could potentially make system packages go wonky. Working inside a venv is perfectly safe.

[kaashif]

Oh, I guess I never even considered doing that for some reason.

If you just run "pip install" doesn't literally tell you to use the --user flag or virtualenv?

I guess it's probably an easy mistake to make.

[nerpderp82]

If you are using system python only to create venvs you are fine. As soon as you install or start modifying the system python in anyway, you are on the path to ruin.