Build Python 3.6 from source for Ubuntu and Debian

build-instructions

Prerequisties install:
- sudo apt-get install build-essential checkinstall

These are the dependancies required by python:
- sudo apt-get install libbz2-dev libc6-dev libgdbm-dev libncursesw5-dev libreadline-gplv2-dev libssl-dev libsqlite3-dev tk-dev

Download the tar source file from python.org (at the time of writing 3.6.1 is the latest release):
- wget -O ~/Downloads/python3.6.1.tgz https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.6.1/Python-3.6.1.tgz

Via command line navigate to the downloaded file directory:
- cd ~/Downloads/

Untar the downloaded file:
- tar -zxvf python3.6.1.tgz

Via commandline navigate to the newly extracted file:
cd python3.6.1/

Compiling the code:
- ./configure --enable-optimizations
- sudo make altinstall

Altinstall will make sure default python on your machine is not touched.
You can run python3.6 from commandline via the command python3.6