Conda
Ranked 14 of 35 package managers by recommenders
People favor conda for handling non-Python binary dependencies and for reliably installing packages that just work. Critics say its solver is slow and can fail with unresolvable conflicts.
People favor conda for handling non-Python binary dependencies and for reliably installing packages that just work. Critics say its solver is slow and can fail with unresolvable conflicts.
48 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 19
- criticize it
- 29
- approval share
- 40%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 19 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 10 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Handles non-Python binary dependencies
“conda is the "grand unifier", giving users 100% what they ask for artifacts-wise, albeit rather slowly”
Comment from 4 Jan 2026 in “Go Away Python” “Conda on the other hand, with external binary dependencies, now we're talking.”
Comment from 19 Mar 2026 in “Thoughts on OpenAI acquiring Astral and uv/ruff/ty” “uv isn't a replacement since it cannot install those”
Comment from 19 Mar 2026 in “Astral to Join OpenAI” - Comment from 7 Nov 2025 on Hacker News
Things just work
“I'm pretty happy with Conda. I just create a new environment and install on it. It normally works.”
Comment from 20 Mar 2026 in “Show HN: Three new Kitten TTS models – smallest less than 25MB” “I switched to conda for those projects and... things just worked”
Comment from 18 Sep 2026 in “Flet 1.0 – Build cross-platform apps in Python” “then all was well when I used conda instead”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “Go Away Python” Correct solver, easy package management
“People criticising conda's solver prove they haven't used it in years.”
Comment from 27 Dec 2025 in “How uv got so fast” “it had a correct solver, and it was easy to manage my own packages”
Comment from 16 Sep 2026 in “Java 27” Best option despite its faults
“Honestly, they should be using conda (if they're working on their laptops)”
Comment from 27 Dec 2025 in “How uv got so fast” “conda for all its faults is the best option for those in the”
Comment from 28 Dec 2025 in “How uv got so fast”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Slow dependency solving
“Conda helped some but was always so slow.”
Comment from 19 Mar 2026 in “Astral to Join OpenAI” “Conda builds can sometimes have issues with dependency resolution taking an unreasonable amount of time.”
Comment from 21 Apr 2026 in “Clojure: Transducers” “moved very slow, struggled with complex dependency collisions, and took up a bunch of unnecessary space”
Comment from 27 Dec 2025 in “Apple releases open-source model that instantly turns 2D photos into 3D views” - Comment from 31 Aug 2026 in “uv: Deduplicate all files in the wheel cache”
- Comment from 27 Dec 2025 in “How uv got so fast”
Unresolvable dependency conflicts
“The default strict priority can make your requirements unsatisfiable, even though there would be a version of each required package in the collection of channels.”
Comment from 20 Nov 2025 in “CUDA Ontology” “It used to be bullet proof but there too you now get absolutely unsolvable circular dependencies”
Comment from 27 Dec 2025 in “How uv got so fast” “For a while Conda seemed to have cracked this, but there too I now get unresolvable conflicts.”
Comment from 20 Nov 2025 in “The lost cause of the Lisp machines” - Comment from 20 Mar 2026 in “Show HN: Three new Kitten TTS models – smallest less than 25MB”
Breaks on scientific and bioinformatics stacks
“projects with incomplete dependencies (installed through Conda, IIRC) which were a major pain to get working”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “Go Away Python” “Conda, and other stuff, just never worked smoothly with the bioinformatics code we were running.”
Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra” “Jupyter+conda/anaconda is almost always not installable and broken for most of its kernels”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “Comparing xeus-Haskell and ihaskell kernels” Does not guarantee reproducible deployment
“Conda offers only a partial resolution to this problem”
Comment from 22 May 2026 in “Uv is fantastic, but its package management UX is a mess” “Conda does not solve the problems of deployment and they don't have any reproducibility guarantees.”
Comment from 19 Apr 2026 in “Binary Dependencies: Identifying the Hidden Packages We All Depend On”
Other package managers people recommend
The four most recommended other package managers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 35 package managers, rankedWhat people said
40 of the 59 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“more and more QuickStart and installation pages for software require the use of uv, conda, 20 variations of venv, etc.”
“I worked with data, so tended to use conda and still have loads of problems.”
“Conda significantly predated it”
“I switched to conda for those projects and... things just worked”
“it had a correct solver, and it was easy to manage my own packages”
“conda, which is glacially slow, but that would arguably be unfair since conda does things uv doesn't”
“Conda, and other stuff, just never worked smoothly with the bioinformatics code we were running.”
“the current solutions (Docker, Flatpak, things like conda) are all bad solutions to this particular problem”
“Especially nicer on Linux systems as the packages are preinstalled.”
“Conda offers only a partial resolution to this problem”
“there was always the need to activate the env before doing anything”
“Conda builds can sometimes have issues with dependency resolution taking an unreasonable amount of time.”
“Conda does not solve the problems of deployment and they don't have any reproducibility guarantees.”
“the closest and has even better ergonomics than Nix”
“Enjoyed having it with Conda”
“they still build PyTorch for Intel Macs or OpenCV for macOS 11+”
“I'm pretty happy with Conda. I just create a new environment and install on it. It normally works.”
“since then I've had quite a few unresolvable version issues with it”
“similar to Conda or pyenv it just wasn't something I was going to like”
“Conda on the other hand, with external binary dependencies, now we're talking.”
“uv isn't a replacement since it cannot install those”
“Conda helped some but was always so slow.”
“it definitely does share package versions across environments when possible, while keeping updates and such isolated to the current environment”
“If I have to use a Python library the faff becomes unbearable”
“conda is the "grand unifier", giving users 100% what they ask for artifacts-wise, albeit rather slowly”
“Reject EVERYTHING ELSE for running / building py pip, poetry, conda ... etc.”
“then all was well when I used conda instead”
“that's yet another thing to fix a fundamentally broken paradigm”
“projects with incomplete dependencies (installed through Conda, IIRC) which were a major pain to get working”
“conda for all its faults is the best option for those in the”
“moved very slow, struggled with complex dependency collisions, and took up a bunch of unnecessary space”
“It used to be bullet proof but there too you now get absolutely unsolvable circular dependencies”
“Honestly, they should be using conda (if they're working on their laptops)”
“People criticising conda's solver prove they haven't used it in years.”
“conda can take an hour to tell you your desired packages are unsatisifiable”
“Jupyter+conda/anaconda is almost always not installable and broken for most of its kernels”
“The default strict priority can make your requirements unsatisfiable, even though there would be a version of each required package in the collection of channels.”
“For a while Conda seemed to have cracked this, but there too I now get unresolvable conflicts.”
“conda does a lot of heavy lifting for me”
“will only work reliably with conda”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.