I don't have a lot of information, so here goes a shot in the dark. One day I started experiencing a delay when starting python. I'm on Ubuntu 16.04. It takes three seconds to get a prompt when I type 'python' on the command line (Python 2.7.12). When I run a script that imports packages, it takes longer, up to 17 seconds just to do the imports. Python3 is not affected, and is snappy as expected.
That's all I know. I'm hoping someone else has seen this. I'm about ready to wipe the drive and upgrade to 18.04. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
