apt was mentioned, so this might actually be Debian's problem. Python doesn't support being installed without its standard library, but (unless they've decided to stop being dumb since I last checked) Debian's python package only contains part of the standard library, and the rest is split into other optional packages. If you find software that says its only dependency is python, on Debian-derived distros, it might not work without installing extra packages, and if the software's maintainer doesn't use Debian and know about this, then their installation instructions won't cover it.