There's a new distribution of the Python and R data science package distribution formerly known as Continuum Analytics. The distribution has been renamed as Anaconda and has more than 100 new packages.

The renaming is apparently to reinforces the distribution's commitment to the growing Anaconda open source community.  Anaconda is a package manager, an environment manager, a Python distribution, and a collection of open source packages. This last element is the Anaconda Distribution. It has more than 4.5 million active users, and it contains over 1000 Python and R data science packages. 

More than 100 packages have been updated or added to the distribution since the previous release. R has been updated to version 3.4.2, and all the R packages (including RStudio) have been rebuilt to be compatible with the new Anaconda 5.0 compilers.

Among the list of updated packages are Python, Numpy, Spyder, Navigator, and Bokeh.

The developers have also built off conda-forge recipes to make the distribution better integrated with the conda-forge community. This is the conda packaging community, and it has built over 3,200 different packages over the last couple of years.

The alpha preview of JupyterLab is now included in the Anaconda Distribution, and MKL has been updated. JupyterLab is intended to take the Jupyter Notebook interface to the next level by adding flexible building blocks for interactive and collaborative computing.

The new Anaconda distribution also has all new compilers on macOS and Linux, and the developers say these provide substantial security and performance improvements.

Another major change is that where possible, all build recipes are now using conda-forge as a base, via https://github.com/AnacondaRecipes

The other main improvement is that the new version of Anaconda Distribution now features more flexible dependency pinning of NumPy packages, providing wider ranges of compatibility.

More Information

Anaconda Distribution download 

Anaconda Distribution Release Notes 

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