Continuum Analytics: Documentation

# Anaconda Distribution

Anaconda Distribution Open Data Science Core

Anaconda is an easy-to-install free package manager, environment manager, Python distribution, and collection of over 720 open source packages offering free community support.

Get the `Anaconda Cheat Sheet` and then download Anaconda.

Don’t want the huge collection of 720 software packages? Then get Miniconda and get started with this guide.

## Navigator or conda?

After you install Anaconda or Miniconda, you’ll choose to work with either Anaconda Navigator (if you prefer a desktop graphical user interface), or conda (if you prefer to use a command prompt or terminal program). You can even switch between the two.

Any Anaconda package can be installed, removed, or updated with a few clicks in Navigator, or with a single conda command in a command prompt or terminal window.

Anaconda Navigator is a desktop graphical user interface included in Anaconda that allows you to launch applications and easily manage conda packages, environments and channels without the need to use a command prompt or terminal program. Anaconda Navigator is automatically installed when you install Anaconda.

To try Anaconda Navigator, after installing Anaconda, look on your programs menu for the Navigator icon. See Anaconda Navigator.

Conda works in the command prompt program on Windows, or in a terminal program on Linux and macOS. Conda was created for Python programs, but can package and distribute any software.

To try conda, after installing Anaconda or Miniconda, take the 30-minute conda test drive, download a conda cheat sheet and see our “Using conda” section for fun things to do with conda.

## Product specifications

- License: Anaconda is free to use and redistribute under the terms of the Anaconda End User License Agreement
- Windows Vista* or newer, macOS 10.7+, or Linux (Ubuntu, RedHat and others; CentOS 5+)
- 32-bit or 64-bit
- Minimum 3 GB disk space to download and install.

*Windows XP is supported on Anaconda versions 2.2 and earlier. See Old package lists.

## Packages available in Anaconda

- Over 150 packages are automatically installed with Anaconda.
- Over 250 additional open source packages can be individually installed from the Anaconda repository at the command line, by using the “conda install” command.
- Thousands of other packages are available from Anaconda.org.
- Others can be downloaded using the “pip install” command that is included and installed with Anaconda.
- You can also make your own custom packages using the “conda build” command, and upload them to Anaconda.org, PyPi or other repositories.

## High performance

Anaconda provides high performance computing with Anaconda Accelerate and several other components:

- IOPro
- MKL Optimizations
- NumbaPro

Some of these components require licenses, and license management is described here:

- License installation

## What’s new in Anaconda 4.3?

Anaconda 4.3 was released on January 31, 2017 and includes the following:

- The Anaconda3 installers are based on Python 3.6. Anaconda 4.3 supports Python 2.7, 3.4, 3.5 and 3.6. Anaconda 4.3 will be the last release which supports Python 3.4. We will discontinue regular Python 3.4 package updates in the next release.
- The Intel Math Kernel Library (MKL) is updated from 11.3.3 to 2017.0.1.
- Matplotlib is updated from 1.5.3 to 2.0.0.
- seaborn is now installed by default.
- Over 90 packages are updated.
- Jpeg and libpng are updated to increase compatibility with conda-forge.
- The installer now warns about possible errors if installing on Windows into an install path with spaces, and does not allow installation if the install path contains unicode characters.
- Improved Windows uninstallation.
- Anaconda 4.2 is the last release that supports macOS 10.7 and macOS 10.8. Anaconda 4.3 supports macOS versions from 10.9 through the current version 10.12.
- conda-build, anaconda-clean and the Jupyter Notebook extensions are no longer installed by default but can be installed with a single conda command.

For full details please see the changelog.

## Previous versions

Previous versions of Anaconda are available in the archive. See the list of packages included in each previous version in the Old package lists.

## Product archive

The following Continuum products have been replaced and are no longer available to new users. Documentation for these products is made available for existing users only:

- Anaconda Launcher (replaced by Anaconda Navigator)
- Anaconda for Cluster Management (replaced by Anaconda Scale)

## Support

For free community support, join the Anaconda Mailing List.

Please report bugs on the Anaconda GitHub issue tracker.

Packages: Refer to the Anaconda included packages list.

Continuum Analytics also offers support & training.