Miniconda is a free, miniature installation of Anaconda Distribution that includes only conda, Python, the packages they both depend on, and a small number of other useful packages. It is now the recommended replacement for Anaconda on UD’s HPC clusters (Caviness and DARWIN), as Anaconda changes its policy for academic use. To determine the available versions of Anaconda installed, use

$ vpkg_versions miniconda

Miniconda is available through the VALET packages on Caviness clusters. To check the versions,

$ vpkg_versions miniconda

Available versions in package (* = default version):

[/opt/shared/valet/2.1/etc/miniconda.vpkg_yaml]
miniconda  A free, miniature installation of Anaconda Distribution
* 25.1.1.2 Miniconda py39 25.1.1-2 for Linux (x86_64)

To load it, use

$ vpkg_require miniconda/25.1.1.2
Adding package `miniconda/25.1.1.2` to your environment

You can create a new Conda environment either by name or by path.

conda create --name myenv python=3.13

By default, Conda environments are created in your home directory. However, the limited home directory quotas (20 GB) can be filled up quickly. You can create an environment in a specific path, such as your /work/workgroup directory,

conda create -p $WORKDIR/$USER/myenv python=3.13

After creating the Conda environments, you can activate the local conda environment using,

conda activate myenv

Then you can install the desired packages, for example,

conda install <package_name>