What is a good, default backend for matplotlib

Both Agg and TkAgg do not require any dependencies beyond Python's standard library.

I have had some issues with TkAgg and multi-threading, so if you only need to save to files (and not plt.show()), I would recommend using Agg instead (just replace it where TkAgg appears below).

Either add the following line to your ~/.config/matplotlib/matplotlibrc:

backend: TkAgg

Or the following lines to your python file:

import matplotlib
matplotlib.use('TkAgg')
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt