1. It's a framework for interfacing Python and C++, which allows you to expose C++ classes and object to Python, and vice-versa.
2. It does not require special tools, except for your C++ compiler.
3. It's designed to wrap C++ interface non-intrusively, so that you don't have to change the original C++ code in order to wrap it, making Boost.Python ideal for exposing 3rd-party libraries to Python.

Boost Hello World example on the Quick Start Page, and the Building process is on the Building Hello World page. However, it use MSVC as an example. For linux, I didn't find a bjam example. But here is a Makefile example.