OS

Any Operating system is OK.

Preferred platform is either unix or OSX.

OSX

Should have  XCode installed.

Should have one of MacPorts or Fink installed. I prefer  MacPorts. Having both makes life too complicated. Also, brew does not have as many packages but is focused on 64 bit intel installs for Leopard and Snow Leopard.

Windows

Windows will have to have many addons including:

Windows will be hit and miss as to when there are good installers (scipy) and when they are missing (hdf5)

Python Version

Python 2.6.X installed. Python comes on osx and unix but a clean build from source is a good choice.

After python is installed the first thing to be added is  setup tools. After that *most* python packages can be installed with easy_install package-name commands.

Virtualenv should be installed. With setup-tools installed you should be able to just type: 

easy_install virtualenv

This may need to be done as sudo as it wants to install a virtualenv script

The Hard Parts

Some libraries are much more involved to install. There are precompiled binaries for may platforms as well as a supported set of binaries (including a complete python install) from  Enthought Numpy and Scipy installed.

pyTables installed (requires hdf5 to be installed)

PostgresSQL

 Postgresql should be installed (pref ver8.4 but 8.1 as a minimum). I think I have the version from macports but brew has a good 64 bit install available.

update: OK, brew was good but to get a standardized install on OSX, now using 9.2.1 with::

./configure --with-bonjour --with-python --with-libxml --with-libxslt