Anaconda vs. miniconda

Question

In the Anaconda repository, there are two types of installers:

\"Anaconda installers\" and \"Miniconda installers\".

What

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

Anaconda is a very large installation ~ 2 GB and is most useful for those users who are not familiar with installing modules or packages with other package managers.

Anaconda seems to be promoting itself as the official package manager of Jupyter. It's not. Anaconda bundles Jupyter, R, python, and many packages with its installation.

Anaconda is not necessary for installing Jupyter Lab or the R kernel. There is plenty of information available elsewhere for installing Jupyter Lab or Notebooks. There is also plenty of information elsewhere for installing R studio. The following shows how to install the R kernel directly from R Studio:

To install the R kernel, without Anaconda, start R Studio. In the R terminal window enter these three commands:

install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("IRkernel/IRkernel")
IRkernel::installspec()

Done. The next time Jupyter is opened, the R kernel will be available and available.