What are the differences between Conda and Anaconda?

Question

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.

Brief

conda is both a command line tool, and a python package.

Miniconda installer = Python + conda

Anaconda installer = Python + conda + meta package anaconda

meta Python pkg anaconda = about 160 other Python packages for daily use in data science

Anaconda installer = Miniconda installer + conda install anaconda

Detail

conda is an environment manager and a package manager. It means the tool itself. conda makes it possible to

• install package with conda install flake8
• create an environment with any version of Python with conda create -n myenv python=3.6

conda is not a binary command, is a Python package. To make conda work, you have to create a Python environment and install package conda into it. This is where Anaconda installer and Miniconda installer comes in.

Installer Minoconda installs a Python and the package conda. Installer Anaconda not only does what Miniconda does, it also install a meta Python package named anaconda for you.

Meta packages, are packages that do NOT contain actual softwares and simply depend on other packages to be installed.

The actual 160+ python packages included in pkg anaconda are listed in info/recipe/meta.yaml in its source file.

package:
    name: anaconda
    version: '2019.07'
build:
    ignore_run_exports:
        - '*'
    number: '0'
    pin_depends: strict
    string: py36_0
requirements:
    build:
        - python 3.6.8 haf84260_0
    is_meta_pkg:
        - true
    run:
        - alabaster 0.7.12 py36_0
        - anaconda-client 1.7.2 py36_0
        - anaconda-project 0.8.3 py_0
        # ...
        - beautifulsoup4 4.7.1 py36_1
        # ...
        - curl 7.65.2 ha441bb4_0
        # ...
        - hdf5 1.10.4 hfa1e0ec_0
        # ...
        - ipykernel 5.1.1 py36h39e3cac_0
        - ipython 7.6.1 py36h39e3cac_0
        - ipython_genutils 0.2.0 py36h241746c_0
        - ipywidgets 7.5.0 py_0
        # ...
        - jupyter 1.0.0 py36_7
        - jupyter_client 5.3.1 py_0
        - jupyter_console 6.0.0 py36_0
        - jupyter_core 4.5.0 py_0
        - jupyterlab 1.0.2 py36hf63ae98_0
        - jupyterlab_server 1.0.0 py_0
        # ...
        - matplotlib 3.1.0 py36h54f8f79_0
        # ...
        - mkl 2019.4 233
        - mkl-service 2.0.2 py36h1de35cc_0
        - mkl_fft 1.0.12 py36h5e564d8_0
        - mkl_random 1.0.2 py36h27c97d8_0
        # ...
        - nltk 3.4.4 py36_0
        # ...
        - numpy 1.16.4 py36hacdab7b_0
        - numpy-base 1.16.4 py36h6575580_0
        - numpydoc 0.9.1 py_0
        # ...
        - pandas 0.24.2 py36h0a44026_0
        - pandoc 2.2.3.2 0
        # ...
        - pillow 6.1.0 py36hb68e598_0
        # ...
        - pyqt 5.9.2 py36h655552a_2
        # ...
        - qt 5.9.7 h468cd18_1
        - qtawesome 0.5.7 py36_1
        - qtconsole 4.5.1 py_0
        - qtpy 1.8.0 py_0
        # ...
        - requests 2.22.0 py36_0
        # ...
        - sphinx 2.1.2 py_0
        - sphinxcontrib 1.0 py36_1
        - sphinxcontrib-applehelp 1.0.1 py_0
        - sphinxcontrib-devhelp 1.0.1 py_0
        - sphinxcontrib-htmlhelp 1.0.2 py_0
        - sphinxcontrib-jsmath 1.0.1 py_0
        - sphinxcontrib-qthelp 1.0.2 py_0
        - sphinxcontrib-serializinghtml 1.1.3 py_0
        - sphinxcontrib-websupport 1.1.2 py_0
        - spyder 3.3.6 py36_0
        - spyder-kernels 0.5.1 py36_0
        # ...

Seeing from the above info, pre-installed packages from meta pkg anaconda are mainly for web scraping and data science. Like requests, beautifulsoup, numpy, nltk, etc.

If you have a Miniconda installed, conda install anaconda will make it same as an Anaconda installation, except that the installation folder names are different.