Does python require extra software like java
That depends on what you want to do with it.
After you installed Python, if you type python at the command prompt or in the terminal, you get into the REPL, which enables you to type statements and expressions and see the result.
Python from python.org comes with IDLE, a development environment aimed at enabling you to do the first steps using Python. You can create scripts and programs using that.
Python usually comes with the standard library. It is a library with utility functions and classes that you will need a lot when programming.
However, to create modern and complete programs, you will need to load libraries that help you with that. As examples (I know I am far from complete!):
- For scientific and numerical programming you can use Numpy and/or Scipy
- for data science using Pandas is quite common
- for creating graphical user interfaces you can turn to tkinter, pyqt, pyside, kivy and a lot of others
- there are a lot of helpful packages to help with web programming, Django, Flask, Bottle and many others
All around the web there are loads of tutorials to guide you through the first steps, for beginner programmers as well as programmers coming from other languages. There will be one to suit you.