Add blog post for conda-based installers

content/authors/mrclary/contents.lr

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+_model: author
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+name: Ryan Clary
+---
+image: mrclary.jpg

content/blog/cbi-installers/contents.lr

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+title: Spyder 6 will get a new installer for all platforms and a standalone application for Linux!
+---
+author: mrclary
+---
+pub_date: 2024-04-11 00:00
+---
+category: Announcement
+---
+tags: milestone, new-feature, installers
+---
+summary: Spyder 6 will introduce new conda-based installers for Windows, macOS, and Linux. While Windows and macOS have had installers for some time, this new development will provide a more consistent and reliable user experience across all platforms, including Linux. Additionally, the new installers lay the foundation for several exciting new Spyder features.
+---
+body:
+
+For the last several years, Spyder has offered standalone installers for Windows and macOS which isolate Spyder's runtime environment from users' development environments.
+This provides a more stable user experience than traditional conda or pip installation methods.
+However, these standalone installers did not allow implementing desirable features, such as automatic incremental updates or installing external Spyder plugins like Spyder-Notebook and Spyder-Unittest.
+Additionally, these standalone applications were limited to Windows and macOS.
+
+Our new installers will provide a more consistent experience for users across all platforms, including Linux, while maintaining the benefits of an isolated runtime environment for Spyder.
+Additionally, they are fully compatible with incremental updates and external plugin management.
+Look for future announcements about these and other features!
+
+So, what will you see with these new installers?
+If you are a Windows user, you will continue to have a graphical interface guiding you through the installation process, and will likely not notice any difference from the previous experience.
+
+![Windows installer](windows.png)
+
+If you are a macOS user, you will now have a `.pkg` package installer instead of a `.dmg` disk image.
+Rather than drag-and-drop the application to the `Applications` folder, the `.pkg` installer provides a graphical interface that will guide you through the installation process with more flexibility.
+
+![macOS installer](macos.png)
+
+If you are a Linux user, you will have an interactive shell script guiding you through the installation process.
+This ensures it is compatible with as many distributions and desktop environments as possible.
+
+![Linux installer](linux.png)
+
+In all cases, you will not need to have Anaconda installed, nor do you need an existing Python environment; in fact, you don't even need a preexisting Python installation!
+These installers are completely self-contained.
+Spyder will continue to include popular packages such as NumPy, SciPy, Pandas and Matplotlib so you can start coding out-of-the-box.
+However, you will still be able to use Spyder with your existing conda, venv, Python.org, and other Python installers and environments as before.
+Furthermore, only Spyder and its critical dependencies will be updated on each new release, which will make getting the latest version a lean and frictionless process.
+
+The Spyder team is really excited about these new installers and the new features they will make possible, and we hope you enjoy them too!