1 Introduction
Conda, as a commonly used software in the Python data science field, is a classic tool for managing Python environments and related dependencies. It is usually integrated into products such as Anaconda or Miniconda for users' daily use.
However, for a long time, Conda has been criticized by users for running slowly and having slow library parsing speed in many scenarios. Moreover, because Anaconda and Miniconda themselves are "commercial" software products, many companies use Anaconda and Miniconda to download and install non-open source licensed software library resources without obtaining a commercial license. This has led to the detection of enterprise IP addresses by Anaconda, resulting in receiving related lawyer letters and causing a series of commercial risks.
In this context, Conda-forge, driven by the open-source software community, has developed rapidly and provides a series of open-source tools and network resource services that are free to use, without commercial risks, and stable and efficient. Today, I will introduce Miniforge, which is developed and maintained by the Conda-forge organization and can be used as an alternative to Anaconda and Miniconda.
2 Installation and Usage of Miniforge
2.1 Download and Install Miniforge
The official download page of Miniforge (https://conda-forge.org/miniforge/) hosts the installation package resources on Github:
Friends in China can accelerate the download of Miniforge installation package resources through the Tsinghua University mirror site (https://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/github-release/conda-forge/miniforge/). Select the version that matches your system and download it. Taking Windows as an example, download the Miniforge3-24.3.0-0-Windows-x86_64.exe corresponding to the latest version:
After the download is complete, double-click to open and install it (it is recommended to "clean up" any residual Python environments on your computer before installation):
Click "I Agree", and then click "Next" to proceed.
2.2 Configure Environment Variables
For Windows systems, since the new version of Miniforge no longer provides the option to automatically create relevant environment variables during installation, we need to manually add the relevant paths to the system PATH. For example, if my Miniforge is custom-installed in C:\miniforge on my computer, I need to add at least these three paths: C:\miniforge, C:\miniforge\Scripts, C:\miniforge\Library\bin:
After completing the above process, you can execute mamba -V in the terminal on your computer to check the relevant version information (Miniforge includes a minimal version of Conda and Mamba) and verify if the above configuration is completed:
For more usage, please refer to the official documentation of Mamba: https://mamba.readthedocs.io/