selecting 'python3-distutils' instead of 'python3.11-distutils'

Unfortunately, the deadsnakes PPA does not reflect the vast number of packages that are from PyPI or other parts of the Ubuntu libraries and thus does not have individual packages such as python3-distutils for their versions.

This said, in Python 3.11, distutils is part of the standard Python libraries, so it's quite possible it is already included in the Deadsnakes PPA version of Python 3.11 without an extra package.

If not, you'll have to see if there's a version of it available in PyPI (which there may not be).

(Note that distutils is gone in Python 3.12 and later, so anything using it won't work if you go to even newer Python)

For this, you'll probably have to create a virtual environment for you to utilize and then install distutils with PyPI / pip.

1) Create a virtual environment for Python 3.11 (aka a 'venv').

I do this for myself and have a virtual environment that doesn't touch the system packages for updating and installing from PyPI and then I execute that in my login shell.

To create the environment like I have, you can do cd $HOME && python3.11 -m venv venv-py311 --system-site-packages

This will create a new directory in your home directory at venv-py311. From there, you can run source $HOME/venv-py311/bin/activate to activate the virtual environment.

You can also add that to the end of your .bashrc so every login shell on the terminal you use will have that.

2) Install distutils inside the venv.

Now that you have the venv and have activated it, you can simply run python3 -m pip install distutils which will then install distutils in the Python 3.11 virtual environment space.

Wait, what about doing this system-wide, and NOT using a venv?

Unfortunately, we have to defer to PEP668 and the Python rules on "Externally Managed Environments" (the full content of which you can read here). What this basically means is that if your Python installation is managed by apt or dpkg (which it is since you're using the Deadsnakes PPA and apt to install/remove it), the Python environment is configured to yell at you so you don't accidentally update something with pip or yourself that will break your entire system environment.

This is why I had you create a virtual environment to run from first. If you really want to make changes to this without the venv, then without doing step 1 and 2, you can run python3.11 -m pip install --break-system-packages distutils which will install distutils from PyPI in your Python 3.11 environment system-wide (in /usr/local/... space). This technically won't break your system packages, but for your Python 3.11 libraries (which are DIFFERENT than the default python3 aka Python 3.10 in your system), but because of PEP 668 and handling of Externally Managed Environments, you have to do this workaround.

DO NOT follow this bit if you are using a system-wide default Python installation in your system, because you will run the high risk of breaking things at that point.