Any advice for a Linux distribution for Python and data science applications?

[User 11436]

I would like to get a PinebookPro for data science tasks under linux with python and jupyter notebook.

Are there any troubles I have to expect with this setup? 

Does it matter that the PBP uses a ARM cpu?
Any libraries that will create trouble? 

Or can I just "PIP install" all the stuff I need without much trouble?

Does the Linux distribution matter? 

Thx

I remember reading this post a week or so back and thinking "that sounds like a fun challenge". When I used to use Ubuntu, I'd manage my Python installation via pip. However, I was never particularly good at it, and used to find using pip to manage compatible versions of Python packages a pain in the arse. Particularly for Spyder, which seems to constantly break depending on the versions of pyqt5 and qtwebengine present. Having switched to Manjaro a while back, I've pretty much abandoned pip in favour of the package versions available from pacman (as these tend to be the latest versions anyway).

I initially tried to replicate my Python setup in the PBP Debian Stretch build, but the version of Python in Debian's repos was quite old. I managed to build the latest version of Python from source on the PBP, but failed to navigate the pip dependency maze required to get Spyder running.

I've since switched to the current Manjaro ARM preview and found setting up Python to be as easy as it is on my desktop machine, i.e. for the stuff I use:

Code:

# Update Packages
sudo pacman -Syyu
sudo pacman -S yay base-devel # Access to AUR packages (if yay not already installed)
yay -Sua

# Install data science packages
sudo pacman -S spyder # IDE
sudo pacman -S python-scipy python-numpy python-pandas python-matplotlb python-seaborn python-statsmodels # Data science
sudo pacman -S python-beautifulsoup4 python-mechanize # Web-scraping
yay -S python-lifelines # Data science (survival analysis)

# Up available RAM via zswap
sudo pacman -S zswap-arm
sudo systemctl enable zswap-arm
sudo systemctl start zswap-arm

I've not tried Jupyter, but I note that it's present in Manjaro's repos.

Manjaro KDE desktop + Spyder = 1.0GB RAM usage, leaving you with about 2.8GB for data science stuff. Should be enough for anything other than heavy lifting, as noted by one of the other posts in this thread.

NB: Please ignore my amateurish Python (attached picture). I'm currently teaching myself by porting across some of my old R teaching materials.