I haven't started on the course yet, but I have exp. with Anaconda. On every fresh linux install, I install Anaconda first. It won't do anything to your system.

I haven't started on the course yet, but I have exp. with Anaconda. On every fresh linux install, I install Anaconda first. It won't do anything to your system. It'll ask for a path, install all the necessary files there and then add that directory at the start of path so that when you type python on terminal the anaconda python will start. You can still access the previously installed python version by typing python2.7 or python3.5.