Current state of telemetry and side question about anaconda security concerns

New to Julia
1

Hi all,
I am going to reinstall Julia from scratch on Linux mint and at least one of the books I have read about Julia suggest that I do so using anaconda. I am coming from Python so the only things I ever installed were python and python Idle, pandas, numpy, plotly, dash. When I did so I was confident I hadn’t installed more than I needed and thus less to maintain. I also was concerned about the telemetry issue but that was due to my ignorance caused by not having to deal with it as I wasn’t about to use conda or anaconda. I don’t really work with others so sharing code is not an issue, I’ll be happy to contribute to Julia but want to make sure that it’s on my terms. SO my questions are:

is it really useful to install anaconda if I am a lone developer.

what is the current state of approaches like Telemetry. Is it opt in or opt out.
thank you

2

Just to be sure - you are simply talking about installing Julia, not about installing Python alongside Julia to use thing through PyCall (like matplotlib, or IJulia)? If that’s the case just following the instructions here should be enough, no need for anaconda at all.

1 Like
3

Hi @nilshg
thanks for the reply. I don’t want to install Python alongside Julia as this is a fresh os ( linux mint) on a machine that I have never written a line of python on. Thank you for the reassurance as it seemed to me that I would be making a mistake not installing via anaconda. I prefer to load the minimum and add to it as needed. Thanks again
theakson

4

That is simply bad advice and will give you a far from up to date version of Julia. For those who are already heavily invested in the Conda environment and don’t care if they get an inferior Julia experience it might be convenient, but everybody else should install Julia from the official binaries.

Neither, there is no telemetry implemented in Julia.

5

Hello @GunnarFarneback thank you for taking the time.

I think it would be prudent to ask why you say Conda and not Anaconda, is it just for brevity or is there a distinction?

Is there a thread where they discuss the merits or otherwise of conda/Anaconda? I can’t seem to find one

The telemetry question was targeted at Anaconda so does your answer still apply please?

I would have thought if I installed julia from the official website I would get then official binaries, wasn’t that what @nilshg was suggesting? I wasn’t going to use sudo apt install julia if that was your concern. I was going to seek out the most current stable release, and add what I needed as I went along.

I was following this approach from MIT,

https://computationalthinking.mit.edu/Fall20/installation/
thank you again for your guidance.

6

I think it would be prudent to ask why you say Conda and not Anaconda, is it just for brevity or is there a distinction?

People mostly talk of Conda installations, but whether there is a distinction is beyond my knowledge.

Is there a thread where they discuss the merits or otherwise of conda/Anaconda? I can’t seem to find one

No idea. Whenever people at work have tried to install Julia from Conda they have ended up with Julia 1.1.

The telemetry question was targeted at Anaconda so does your answer still apply please?

No idea. I thought you were asking about the telemetry in Julia.

I would have thought if I installed julia from the official website I would get then official binaries, wasn’t that what @nilshg was suggesting?

Yes, it was, and yes, that’s the way to go.

I wasn’t going to use sudo apt install julia if that was your concern.

Yeah, that’s another way to get a not up to date Julia.

1 Like
7

Thank you for taking the time. My mind is at rest. Install from the official julia web site, follow the advice of MIT and install Pluto.jl and do NOT install with either anaconda or conda to ensure I get the full julia experience. Thank you @nilshg and @GunnarFarneback for taking the time to help me on my journey.

1 Like