What does conda do when “solving environment”

Question

Whenever I run conda install/remove/update , it tells me it\'s \"Solving environment\" for some time before telling me the list of things it\'s going

Answer 1

As a side note on the "Solving Environment" step...
Lack of administrator privileges may affect whether or where you can install python packages.

I observed that my installs would hang on the "Solving Environment" step and never get through when attempting to install packages while logged in as a non-administrator.

Getting switched to admin was possible for me on the machine I was stuck on, so I just did that and it solved the problem.

Commenter explains workaround when this is not possible.