Installing Anaconda3 on Ubuntu (Linux)

Anaconda is an open-source toolkit that is useful in programming and machine learning using Python/R [1]. In this article, we are going to install Anaconda3 on Ubuntu (Linux).

Preparing system

Open a terminal by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T. Update and upgrade your system using the following commands:

$ sudo apt-get update

$ sudo apt-get upgrade

Installing prerequisites

You need to install the following libraries to run Anaconda on your system. Paste the following command in the terminal.

$ sudo apt-get install libgl1-mesa-glx libegl1-mesa libxrandr2 libxrandr2 libxss1 libxcursor1 libxcomposite1 libasound2 libxi6 libxtst6

Downloading Anaconda

At first, change to the directory where you want to download the software. Let’s say ‘Downloads‘.

$ cd Downloads/

You can either manually download the latest version of the Anaconda installer from here or use the following command.

$ wget https://repo.anaconda.com/archive/Anaconda3-2021.05-Linux-x86_64.sh

It will take a moment to finish downloading.

Installing Anaconda

Let’s first verify the integrity of the installer using the following command.

$ sha256sum Anaconda3-2021.05-Linux-x86_64.sh

It should display something like this:

45c851b7497cc14d5ca060064394569f724b67d9b5f98a926ed49b834a6bb73a Anaconda3-2021.05-Linux-x86_64.sh

Now, let’s run the Anaconda script.

$ bash Anaconda3-2021.05-Linux-x86_64.sh

It will show you a license. In the end, type yes to agree to the license. After the license agreement, you will be prompted to select the installation location. Select appropriately and let the installation process complete.

Now, activate the installation using the following command.

$ source ~/.bashrc

You can check the installation by typing $ conda list command. It will list all the packages available through Anaconda.

Setting up Anaconda environment

Let,s create a Python3 environment as my_env.

$ conda create --name my_env python=3

Now, activate the new environment as shown below.

$ conda activate my_env

Now, Anaconda has been installed successfully on your system.

References

1. Anaconda Software Distribution. Computer software. Vers. 2-2.4.0. Anaconda, Nov. 2016. Web. <https://anaconda.com>.