A common error somebody may encounter using Python protobufs on common Linux distros is:

TypeError: __init__() got an unexpected keyword argument 'syntax'

This is most likely due to the fact that a lot of OSs have an outdated version of the Python protobuf package. Typically a user may acquire protobuf tools from the OS package manager like

sudo apt-get install protobuf-compiler
sudo apt-get install python-protobuf

The protobuf compiler will compile a version of the protobuf which has a syntax the python-protobuf, the package that allows you to do import google.protobuf, doesn’t understand. Specifically, all objects will be passed a syntax field to their __init__ function. Update Python protobuf by visiting the repo and getting the latest version.