Install Miniconda¶

There are many different ways to get up and running with an environment that will facilitate our work. One approach I can recommend is to install and use Miniconda.

Miniconda is a free minimal installer for conda. It is a small, bootstrap version of Anaconda that includes only conda, Python, the packages they depend on, and a small number of other useful packages, including pip, zlib and a few others. — https://docs.conda.io/en/latest/miniconda.html

You can skip Miniconda entirely if you prefer and install Jupyter Lab directly, however, I prefer using it to manage other environments too.

You can find installation instructions for Miniconda on their website, but if you're using Linux (e.g. Ubuntu) you can execute the following commands from in your terminal:

wget https://repo.continuum.io/miniconda/Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh chmod +x Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh ./Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh

This will download the installation files and start the interactive installation process. Follow the process to the end, where you should see the following message:

Thank you for installing Miniconda3!

All that's left is to close and re-open the terminal window.