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The first time I put Miniconda on a rented server I spent a full minute pressing arrow keys at a frozen wall of license text over SSH, sure the session had died. It hadn't. The license opens in a pager and nobody warns you. Past that one quirk, installing Miniconda on Ubuntu 24.04 takes about three minutes, needs no root and lands entirely in your home directory, and the same steps work on Debian, Fedora, pretty much any recent distro and any Linux VPS you can SSH into.
Download the Miniconda installer for Linux
Pull the installer down with curl:
curl -O https://repo.anaconda.com/miniconda/Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.shwget does the same job if that's what the box has:
wget https://repo.anaconda.com/miniconda/Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.shThe latest in that filename never changes; the file behind it does, and right now it's release 26.5.3-2. On ARM servers, meaning anywhere uname -m prints aarch64 (a Raspberry Pi, an Ampere instance), you want Miniconda3-latest-Linux-aarch64.sh instead. Anaconda also publishes installers pinned to specific Python versions for the base environment; the Miniconda download guide decodes that whole naming scheme if you care which Python you start from.
Verify the installer with sha256sum
I check the hash on anything I'm about to execute with a shell, and it costs thirty seconds:
sha256sum Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.shCompare the output with the hash printed next to your installer on repo.anaconda.com/miniconda/. A mismatch means the download is corrupted or tampered with, so delete the file and pull it again.
Run the installer interactively
Start it with bash:
bash Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.shNow the pager I mentioned. Press Enter to bring the license up, q to close it (space scrolls through it too, slowly), then type yes to accept. People genuinely get stuck at this screen, there are Reddit threads full of them mashing keys, so if the terminal looks unresponsive, q.
Next it asks for an install location. The default of ~/miniconda3 is right for almost everyone, so press Enter. The last question is if it should run conda init to update your shell profile, and the answer is yes: that edit to ~/.bashrc is how every new shell finds conda, and declining it is behind most of the "conda: command not found" posts you'll ever read. Should something go sideways regardless, the Miniconda troubleshooting guide picks up from there.
Batch install for scripts and remote servers
Provisioning with Ansible or cloud-init, or just in a hurry? There's a batch mode:
bash Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh -b -p ~/miniconda3-b accepts the license and skips every prompt, -p sets the prefix. Batch mode deliberately leaves your shell config alone, so run the init yourself afterwards:
~/miniconda3/bin/conda init bashOn a fresh cloud server there's also the option of skipping this section entirely: LumaDock's Ubuntu VPS plans carry a one-click Miniconda template, so the box boots with conda already wired in.
Activate conda and check the (base) prompt
conda init only affects shells opened after it ran. Reload the one you're sitting in:
source ~/.bashrcThe prompt picks up a (base) prefix, base being the small default environment Miniconda ships with. Then:
conda --versionconda 26.5.3 is the current answer. On a server I also log out and back in once before moving on, because a sourced .bashrc and a genuine fresh login aren't quite the same test.
