Wheels do predate conda (though manylinux did base itself on the experience of Anaconda and Enthought's base set of libraries), and there were distributions lik

Wheels do predate conda (though manylinux did base itself on the experience of Anaconda and Enthought's base set of libraries), and there were distributions like Enthought (or even more field specific distributions like Ureka and individuals like Christoph Gohlke) that provided binaries for the common packages. What the conda ecosystem did was provide a not-horrible package manager that included the full stack (in a pinch to help fix up a student's git repository on a locked-down Windows system I used conda to get git, and you can get R and do R<->python connections easily), and by providing a standard repository interface (as opposed to a locked down and limited version that the other providers appeared to do), conda pushed out anyone doing something bespoke and centralised efforts so spins like conda-forge, bioconda, astroconda could focus on their niche and do it well.