Anaconda or Miniconda?
Story
I have heard of Anaconda and Miniconda for a while but never had a chance to figure out the difference. Both are known for their convenience in managing the virtual environment for python-dev. Last year, I replaced my original Legion with a new MBP M1 and had been using it for development. However, since I am not ready to spend much time on how to get the M1 chip to work on Deep Learning tasks, I never had a chance to play around with my local development environment, not even python.
Yesterday, my friend Ryan advised me on installing Anaconda directly for a python environment. Thought it was a good idea, but I failed to find an Anaconda version that worked with the M1 chip. It was then that I discovered that Miniconda has the privilege. Thus I would like to record a simple process to install a python package management tool, Miniconda, locally on your mac with an M1 chip.
Install Miniconda
Download from Terminal
1 | curl -O https://repo.anaconda.com/miniconda/Miniconda3-latest-MacOSX-arm64.sh |
Install
1 | bash Miniconda3-latest-MacOSX-arm64.sh |
Then use return to proceed the installation process.
After installation successfully, you should be able to play with your python virtual environment.
Anaconda or Miniconda?
I have looked it up online for the difference. If you are new to python and don’t have a clear idea about the virtual environment and package management, Anaconda will be a better choice for you. Anaconda will automatically install more than 1500 scientific packages for your convenience to focus more on the programming language and projects without messing with the environment.
For those who are pretty experienced in python development, and would like to mind your virtual environment, Miniconda is a better choice. As you can probably tell from the name mini, Miniconda has every feature as Anaconda except the pre-installed 1500 packages. For developers who hate Anaconda’s ever-expanding size, there will be no mistakes in picking Miniconda.
References
Anaconda or Miniconda?