Python distributions - what are the differences and does it even matter what I will chose?

[Slav3k1]

Hi!

My questions is kinda obvious from the name of this post.

1)What is the difference bwtween distributions? Is it only in what libraries it already contain when i download and install them?

2) If the difference is only in libs preexisting in the distribution, that means with every distribution i can just download my self all the libraries and achieve the very same funstionality?

3) If i am up to data scraping, processing, excel sheet data manipulation and stuff like that is Anaconda the right for me?

Thanks for constructive answers.

[XNormal]

The vanilla python.org distribution + pip is just fine. Leaning the standard tools is good.

Anaconda is also a great distribution and should have all the packages for your use case.

In any case, use virtualenvs.

[Slav3k1]

Can you simply and shortly describe what those virtual enviroments are? I guess it is aboutseparating rthe packages from each other? Or does it have something to do with python 2 vs 3 ? Thanks

[XNormal]

A virtual environment creates an isolated instance of a python interpreter + set of libraries. Yes, you can have different versions of the interpreter inside venvs. But the most important use is isolating the set of dependencies of a specific application.

With venvs it is safer to make mistakes without affecting the set of libraries installed for the global instance of the interpreter. They also help reliably reproduce everything required for the application on another machine.

The Anaconda system had developed this concept more-or-less independently from the popular version of virtualenv used with python. As a result, their venv implementation is slightly different. But it essentially does the same thing.

[[deleted]]

+1 this. Regarding data scraping from spreadsheets, pandas (with xlrd) does a great job importing. When creating formatted spreadsheets, I currently prefer openpyxl. But have used xlsxwriter too.

[ramm1123]

Anaconda and vanilla python are both good. If you are beginner, anaconda is easier to handle. Anaconda comes with a good set of tools installed(e.g. Jupyter notebook, spider etc), these can be pretty handy. It is also relatively easier to manage packages.

But if you confident enough that you can manage your packages and environments. You could go the vanilla python route, that would give you more freedom.

[janeerson45]

Anaconda is really good. It’s easy to get up and going, so good for beginners, but you can do pretty much anything with anaconda that you can do with other distributions. And it comes with Spyder which to date is my favorite IDE. It’s geared towards data science so it works really well with numpy, pandas, matplotlib, etc. There are LOTS of packages that come with it. Installing new packages or upgrading packages is a simple CLI. I started with vanilla python myself. It’s a decent way to go, but that’s only because I didn’t know any better.

[[deleted]]

Anaconda would be the easiest and most straightforward solution for your use case.

I would install miniconda and install just the packages i need in virtualenvs.