I'll have to wait to catch up with this needed (and welcome) change, as I first need to upgrade my OS (Mint 19.3 64 bit, still supported until April) to a later LTS version first.
That... Is going to take me some time, just to recreate all the tools and utilities I've used over the last 5 years etc.
I did try the "Python Wheel" (not heard of them before) but just spent 20 minutes untangling the mess it made of my home folder, after following instructions found at https://realpython.com/python-wheels/ The venv could not be created, as it was trying to create a folder ./env/bin/activate that is the same name as the file "activate" in ~/env/bin ! (I have Python 3.6.9 installed, and otherwise working well...)
In the mean time... If anyone manages to create a FlatPack, or ApImage for Linux, that would help a lot more people do a lot of the needed testing, with (in the first instance) a known collection of files and dependencies etc all supplied as needed, at the expense of disk space...
(Might even be an idea for overall user deployment on Linux? As most just want to use it, not fight the system just to get it running...)
Just a thought.
(Not all of us out here live on the bleeding edge, preferring stability and reliability instead of continual changes.)
73 and Happy New Year.
Dave G8KBV (or G0WBX)