It’s been a while since I last downloaded anaconda. But I remember when clicking on the download page, it would show the usual “choose your OS > download binary” (eg this archived version in 2019).
Recently I helped someone else set it up and it showed a form to put on email, with smaller gray text near the bottom of the form about skipping it.
Does this count as a dark pattern?
Yes and also not sure why you'd use Anaconda. What's wrong with plain regular Python?
thanks for confirming my suspicion. as for your question, conda in general is good for installing non-python binaries when needed, and managing env. I don’t use anaconda but it provides a good enough interface for beginners and folks without much coding experience. It’s usually the easiest to use that than other variants for them, or the python route of setting up environments
https://github.com/conda-forge/miniforge with mamba is so much better
Conda package manager is like pip on steroids. It's great for science, especially when working on Linux servers where you don't have root
What's the benefit over pip in a venv?
Pip in a venv doesn't get you non python tools.
Conda also has venvs, for seperate environments for stuff as well.
Conda environments can encapsulate more than just Python packages, it brings the pip/venv model to the ecosystems of many languages (R, Go, etc.), and does so at the user level rather than in a folder for one project. The other Anaconda stuff is pretty useless IMO, but Conda is exceptionally useful. Although I would echo what the other commentor said that the mambaforge version is even better than vanilla miniconda