Don't use apt to install python. Never, ever. No version control, too much delay to stick with new versions. If you want to do it manually, install them from the tarball, on python website. If you want to do it more easily, use pyenv, it will handle everything for you, including dark shenanigans with dependencies. Later on, check for other version control tools, like pipenv or poetry. You don't have to use them, but it's nice to understand. More on reddit.com

An update to pip3.12 and pip3 not working after trying it out once. https://imgur.com/a/ZzYHRb2 More on reddit.com

Older installers are available: https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-3119/ More on reddit.com

This basically screams XY problem . Why do you want to install Python inside a Postgres image? What is your goal? Of course you can run Python and Postgres "at the same time", but you should use two containers for that. One is your Postgres db, and the other is your Python app. Then you connect them to each other. Thats the typical way. I dont know anything about that plpython extension, but assuming it doesnt run as a seperate process but simply needs to be installed for Postgres to use it, this should be possible to do. A quick Google search gives a bunch of results of people doing this. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/64045127/how-to-install-plpython-for-postgres ERROR: unable to select packages: python3-3.12.5-r0 (no such package): required by: world[python3-3.12.5-r0] This is not about Docker itself, but simply a matter of how to use apk within Alpine and how to install a specific package version. Docker does not care about this part. Top Google search result says this as example: apk add packagename=1.2.3-suffix and of course you need to run apk update first. Is this a good practice to install multiple services (Python & Postgres) in a Docker container? Or is it an anti-pattern? Its absolutely not a good idea, its a terrible idea. Containers should run a single application only (even just a single process, but thats more arguable). If you want to run multiple things at once, inside one "thing", then a virtual machine is more suitable. More on reddit.com