Transition from Anaconda to Miniforge: October 15, 2024

  |    feature    

Due to the new [licensing restrictions by Anaconda](https://legal.anaconda.com/policies/en?name=terms-of-service#terms-of-service) on research usage, the licensed Anaconda distribution will be removed from the system on October 15, 2024. The current anaconda/2023.07-py3.11 module will redirect to the miniforge/24.3.0-py3.11 module, switching to conda-forge as the default package installation channel with fewer preinstalled packages. Existing environments will not be affected. However, using Anaconda default channels for research without a personal license will violate the Anaconda license. For instructional use, package installation from licensed channels is still allowed

Maintenance: Oct 15, 2024

You may continue to submit jobs until the maintenance period begins, but if the system determines your job will not have time to finish, it will not start until the HPC systems are returned to service.

Questions: Please contact our user services team, or join us for our virtual office hours every Tuesday, 3-5 p.m. and Thursday, 10-12 p.m..

What to expect after the Oct 15 maintenance?

The licensed Anaconda distribution and base environment provided by the anaconda module will be removed from our systems on Oct 15, 2024. The anaconda module will redirect to the new miniforge/24.3.0-py3.11 module, effectively switching to conda-forge as the only default package installation channel and with a reduced number of preinstalled packages in the base environment.

The use of your existing environments should not be affected by this change. For instructional use you may continue to install python packages from the licensed Anaconda default channels as shown in the example above. However, any use of such environment for research purposes is a violation of the Anaconda license unless you obtained your own license.

We understand that these changes may cause inconvenience, but these changes are mandated by the Anaconda licensing condition which we cannot control. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out.

What to expect after the December 12?

FAQ

Miniforge and Anaconda are both popular tools for managing Python environments and packages, but they differ in a few key ways:

1. Size and Preinstalled Packages:

  • Anaconda base environment came with a large number of preinstalled data science libraries. However, miniforge only includes the essential Conda and Mamba package managers along with commonly used packages such as numpy, pandas, matplotlib, etc., from the conda-forge channel.

2. Default Package Channels:

  • Anaconda: Uses Anaconda’s proprietary channels (Anaconda repository) for package installations by default. These packages may have specific licensing restrictions.
  • Miniforge: Uses conda-forge as its default channel, an open-source community-driven repository, ensuring more transparency and flexibility without proprietary limitations.

3. Licensing:

  • Anaconda: The default Anaconda distribution has licensing restrictions for commercial and research use, requiring a paid license for certain types of usage.
  • Miniforge: Has no such restrictions since it uses conda-forge, which provides fully open-source packages.

The use of your existing environments should not be affected by this change. For instructional use you may continue to install python packages from the licensed Anaconda default channels as shown in the example below.

conda install -n path-to-my-conda-enf seaborn -c anaconda

However, any use of such environment for research purposes is a violation of the Anaconda license unless you obtained your own license. Therefore, for research use, it is expected to replace packages installed through the anaconda restricted channels with packages from non-proprietary channels such as conda-forge.

The process and commands for creating conda environments using Miniforge are exactly the same. The only difference is that you need to load the Miniforge module instead of the Anaconda module on our system.Basically,

module load miniforge

conda create -n your_env_name_goes_here (default Python version: use conda info to find out)

Miniforge avoids violating Anaconda’s Terms of Service because it pulls packages from the conda-forge channel by default. Conda-forge is a community led collection of recipes, build infrastructure and distributions for the conda package manager and is free to use.

No. The packages that you had installed previously will not disappear or become inaccessible.

The Miniforge module includes the conda package management system. You can use conda install <package-name> as you may have done previously using the Anaconda module. Miniforge uses the conda-forge channel by default.