Ubuntu: you must compile protobuf-2.4+ from source, cannot use .deb

[lthown]

If not you get errors such as
AttributeError: 'FileDescriptor' object has no attribute 'message_types_by_name'

wget https://protobuf.googlecode.com/files/protobuf-2.4.1.tar.gz
tar -xzvf protobuf-2.4.1.tar.gz
cd protobuf-2.4.1
./configure;make;make install
cd python
python setup.py install

[miebach]

If you are not root add sudo 2 times in the last 3 lines:

./configure;make;sudo make install
cd python
sudo python setup.py install

[Strykar]

On Debian: apt-get install python-pip
pip install protobuf