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pythonanaconda
Riftabin Kabir
Riftabin Kabir

Reputation: 165

Confusion between Python and Anaconda

Recently I have started programming in Python (Python 3.5) on my Linux OS. But I am confused about Anaconda. What is it actually? Is it a version of Python or something else? If I do not install Anaconda will there be any limitations?

Upvotes: 14

Views: 40336

Answers (4)

Tharif
Tharif

Reputation: 13971

Anaconda is a popular Python data science platform.

enter image description here

Anaconda is a commercial distribution of:

  • Python and R programming languages for large-scale data processing, predictive analytics, and scientific computing, that aims to simplify package management and deployment.

Also, you can very well install Anaconda for any operating system i.e linux or windows. They have navigator which will be of great use to launch modules available.

Anaconda while installing asks Python version :

enter image description here

Find more about anaconda at :

Official Website

Anaconda Docs

Upvotes: 6

ally-e
ally-e

Reputation: 1585

Anaconda is a commercial Python distribution and collection of hundreds of packages related to data science, scientific programming, development and more. Python is included in the Anaconda distribution. It is not an IDE (like PyCharm that mentioned in the comments) though it can be configured with most IDEs. I will note that the distribution includes an IDE called Spyder. It also comes with a platform-agnostic package manager called conda.

You can read more here: https://docs.continuum.io/anaconda/

Upvotes: 13

Solruhama
Solruhama

Reputation: 111

Anaconda is nothing but a python and R distribution. If you are working on Machine learning or data science field, tou will find anaconda very useful. So installing anaconda will also install python, conda(which is a package manager in anaconda), a lot of third party python packages, an IDE(like spyder), jupyter notebook(which is very helpful to write codes and visualise results and run codes cell by cell) . However, if tou are just a beginner, installing only python would be enough. Python will have certain standard libraries that will be installed along with it. And when u need new packages, you can use pip to install them. P.s. if you have low memory space and u are just beginning, anaconda is a no no as it will have many packages installed by default, which u might not use. But installing python requires less memory and when u need a third party library, u can use pip to install libraries.

Upvotes: 1

lousycoder
lousycoder

Reputation: 491

Anaconda distribution has been on my computer for last 2 years, on & off, so I feel that I have some experience using it.

Anaconda tries to be a Swiss army knife, and the fact remains, everything that is available with anaconda, can be manually installed using PIP.

If you're a beginner, and don't intend to do some comprehensive stuff in data science/ML field, I don't see any reason that you will need to install Anaconda. If you still want to have conda on your machine, go for it, but if you have python pre-installed, remove it first, and then use conda. (Otherwise you'll have to be specific and observant of where is it that the new python packages being installed on your computer.)

Conda dist. usually occupies 2-4 GB of space very easily.(There is a light installer known as miniconda, but it too goes on to consume memory considerably) When you use conda command to install a python package, it usually pulls additional (maybe unnecessary for a beginner) packages along with it, thus consuming more & more space on your device. So, if your machine is slow and you have less space, Anaconda is a big NO-NO for you.

Anaconda (IMHO) is a finely tuned hype in the internet space of beginner python users.

And even if you have sufficient memory and a capable device, I don't find why should you spend that for things that you may never use. Unless you have a significant benefit when doing so, which could be more pronounced for those in a professional environment.

There are ways to bulk install everything you need using PIP, And PIP only installs what we demand/command from the terminal, nothing additional stuff, unless we ask for it.

Also, keep in mind, if you want to do data science, ML, Deep learning things, go for 64-bit version of python, so that every module you need can be installed without countering errors.

Upvotes: 4

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