scikit-learn packages are available in recent distributions of Debian and Ubuntu, but these aren't always up to date. Here is a quick and dirty way to make a scikit-learn .deb package from source.

1. Get the stdeb package:

    sudo apt-get install python-stdeb python-dev-all
   

   or

    sudo pip install stdeb
   

2. Fetch the latest scikit-learn tarball, or even checkout the bleeding edge from GitHub. Enter the toplevel source directory, then issue

    python setup.py --command-packages=stdeb.command sdist_dsc --depends python-numpy,python-scipy bdist_deb
   

Now, you'll find a directory deb_dist under the toplevel dir, which contains a file python-scikit-learn_0.10-1_amd64.deb (or similar). There's your .deb, ready for installation with a command like sudo dpkg- i.