Anaconda VS. Miniconda

Anaconda vs. miniconda

The difference is that miniconda is just shipping the repository management system. So when you install it there is just the management system without packages. Whereas with Anaconda, it is like a distribution with some built in packages.

Like with any Linux distribution, there are some releases which bundles lots of updates for the included packages. That is why there is a difference in version numbering. If you only decide to upgrade Anaconda, you are updating a whole system.

EDIT there are new options now for on the package management side. mamba can be used as a drop in replacement for conda. It has a faster solver and is a complete re-write in C++. The solver is actually experimentally available in conda with --experimental-solver=libmamba. Keywords to look for if you want to learn more: mamba, mambaforge, micromamba.

What are the differences between Conda and Anaconda?

conda is the package manager. Anaconda is a set of about a hundred packages including conda, numpy, scipy, ipython notebook, and so on.

You installed Miniconda, which is a smaller alternative to Anaconda that is just conda and its dependencies, not those listed above.

Once you have Miniconda, you can easily install Anaconda into it with conda install anaconda.

Anaconda vs miniconda space

You can safely delete the tar.bz2 files. They are only used as a cache. The command conda clean -t will clean them automatically.

What is the difference between miniconda and miniforge?

miniforge is the community (conda-forge) driven minimalistic conda installer. Subsequent package installations come thus from conda-forge channel.

miniconda is the Anaconda (company) driven minimalistic conda installer. Subsequent package installations come from the anaconda channels (default or otherwise).

miniforge started a few months ago because miniconda doens't support aarch64, very quickly the 'PyPy' people jumped on board, and in the mean time there are also miniforge versions for all Linux architectures, as well as MacOS.

Soon there will also be a windows variant (hopefully also for both CPython and PyPy)

I guess that an ARMv7 (32Bit ARM) variant is also on the horizon (Raspbian)

What are the differences between two methods- 'conda install anaconda' and 'conda install conda-forge' to install a package through conda?

In the conda install -c or conda install --channel context, anaconda and conda-forge are CHANNELs to two different package repositories.

1. anaconda repo is managed by Anaconda, Inc. (https://anaconda.org/), and
2. conda-forge repo is managed through community effort. (See https://conda-forge.org/docs/user/introduction.html for more info).

Anaconda and miniconda : Conflict in using jupyter notebook or pycharm?

Are you on a linux system?
You can try with

type jupyter-notebook

This will show you where the binary is located. For example ~/miniconda3/bin.
The path of the bin-folder of your anaconda/miniconda installation is usually added to your path-variable in the ~/.bashrc file.

PS:
You can find out which version of python/python3 you are using by typing

python --version

or

python3 --version

Switch between anaconda and miniconda (miniforge)

According to this post, one solution is to change the content of your .zshrc file, save your changes, close and reopen your terminal. I tested on a MacBook Pro M1 where Miniforge3 and Anaconda3 are currently installed and it works. In the following, just replace --PATH-- with the path of the requested environment management system. For example, I replace --PATH-- with opt/anaconda3 for Anaconda3 and miniforge3 for .. Miniforge3.

# >>> conda initialize >>>
# !! Contents within this block are managed by 'conda init' !!
__conda_setup="$('/Users/username/--PATH--/bin/conda' 'shell.zsh' 'hook' 2> /dev/null)"
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
    eval "$__conda_setup"
else
    if [ -f "/Users/username/--PATH--/etc/profile.d/conda.sh" ]; then
        . "/Users/username/--PATH--/etc/profile.d/conda.sh"
    else
        export PATH="/Users/username/--PATH--/bin:$PATH"
    fi
fi
unset __conda_setup
# <<< conda initialize <<<

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