[Python] VS Code doesn't open Python virtual environment

I'm using Python 3.13.5 with VS Code 1.102.0 on Ubuntu 24.04.2. With VS Code updates, there were often problems with opening venv environment, but usually reloading VS Code was sufficient to make it work. Not with the newest version. Here are the extensions I have installed:



Opening a Python virtual environment project shows that venv is active, both in command prompt and in the bottom bar:



but it is misleading as evidenced by pip list, which lists system Python modules, or deactivate, which fails:

.venvpaul@cube:~/st-python/test$ pip list
...
ufw 0.36.2
unattended-upgrades 0.1
urllib3 2.0.7
wadllib 1.3.6
wheel 0.42.0
xdg 5
xkit 0.0.0
.venvpaul@cube:~/st-python/test$ deactivate
deactivate: command not found
.venvpaul@cube:~/st-python/test$ source .venv/bin/activate
(.venv) .venvpaul@cube:~/st-python/test$ pip list
Package Version
------------------ -------
Levenshtein 0.27.1
pip 25.1.1
python-Levenshtein 0.27.1
RapidFuzz 3.13.0
(.venv) .venvpaul@cube:~/st-python/test$


Only after manual activation and getting a weird (.venv) .venv prompt, I can issue commands inside virtual environment. I replicated this behavior on another system with Python 3.12.7 with VS Code 1.102.0 on Ubuntu 22.04.5. How to fix this problem?

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