python - What are the differences between Conda and Anaconda?

Question

Post-question update:

See Introduction to Conda for more details.

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The problem:

I first installed Anaconda on my ubuntu at ~/anaconda, when I was trying to update my anaconda, according to the documentation from Continuum Analytics, I should use the following commands:

conda update conda
conda update anaconda

Then I realized that I did not have conda installed, so I installed it using the documentation from here.

After conda is installed, when I run conda update anaconda, I got the following error:

Error: package 'anaconda' is not installed in /home/xiang/miniconda

It appears conda is assuming my anaconda is installed under /home/xiang/miniconda which is NOT true.

The questions:

1. What are the differences between conda and anaconda?
2. How can I tell conda where my anaconda is installed?

Answer 1

conda is the package manager. Anaconda is a set of about a hundred packages including conda, numpy, scipy, ipython notebook, and so on.

You installed Miniconda, which is a smaller alternative to Anaconda that is just conda and its dependencies, not those listed above.

Once you have Miniconda, you can easily install Anaconda into it with conda install anaconda.