> Unfortunately, from what I can tell, this is OFF by default. I think
> that is a mistake. The default for something like this is really
> important because without new users being explicitly told to set it,
> new users will not. Most new Python users are just going to take the
> default values and still be confused by not being able to open the
> console and run python as in the instructions for various new user
> tutorials (i.e. web frameworks, scientific computing, etc).

To put things in perspective, the default under POSIX ("make install")
is to make the installed version the default (by copying it
into /usr/bin/python3). To change that behaviour, you have to use "make
altinstall" explicitly.