[noirscape]

Nowadays pip also defaults to installing to the users home folder if you don't run it as root.

Basically the only thing missing from pip install being a smooth experience is something like npx to cleanly run modules/binary files that were installed to that directory. It's still futzing with the PATH variable to run those scripts correctly.

[zahlman]

> Nowadays pip also defaults to installing to the users home folder if you don't run it as root.

This could still cause problems if you run system tools as that user.

I haven't checked (because I didn't install my distro's system package for pip, and because I use virtual environments properly) but I'm pretty sure that the same marker-file protection would apply to that folder (there's no folder there, on my system).