Conda is a cross platform package manager which installs binary conda packages.
Conda can create isolated environments that have their own set of installed and managed packages.
Packages are hard linked into the enviroment to save disk space.
Conda can search for packages from the repository provided by Continuum as well as packages created by users and shared on Anaconda.org
Conda packages can be built from a recipe and shared on Anaconda.org
Conda is available through Anaconda or Miniconda. It cannot be installed seperately.
Both Anaconda and Miniconda install into a single directory. Try one out! You can always remove this directory to get back your original Python setup.