Update setup instructions

[tobyhodges]

This updates the setup instructions for Python workshops. A recent blog post provides more context for this change. Specifically, this PR updates the instructions to reflect that we recommend Miniforge instead of Anaconda Python.

One of the most important changes here is to include an environment.yml for learners to use to create an environment that they can work in during the workshop/while following the lesson. When this PR is ready to merge, I will release a new version of the example data on FigShare that contains the environment file. Since I guess it will be helpful for testing purposes -- and because it is probably a good idea to keep a copy in the lesson repo too -- you can find my proposed version of that file in this PR.

[github-actions]

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 files/environment.yml (new) | 11 +++++++++++
 md5sum.txt                  |  2 +-
 setup.md                    | 40 ++++++++++++++++------------------------
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⏱️ Updated at 2025-05-07 13:27:50 +0000

[K-Meech]

Thanks @tobyhodges - looks good! I tried this out on my Windows laptop, and all worked well 😄 I left a few comments below.

@datacarpentry/image-processing-curriculum-maintainers - it would be great if you could try this out too, especially if you're on mac/linux

[K-Meech]

Looks good to me - thanks @tobyhodges ! I'll leave this open for a while longer, in case the other maintainers have any input

[K-Meech]

@datacarpentry/image-processing-curriculum-maintainers - do feel free to add any further comments / suggestions, otherwise I'll merge this PR at the end of this week

[mkcor]

I'm not sure it's obvious that, on Unix-like platforms, you need to run

bash Miniforge3-$(uname)-$(uname -m).sh

from the terminal to install Miniforge... I would add a line about this. Is it obvious on Windows? I guess so, if you need to double-click what you just downloaded.

[K-Meech]

Yes - on Windows it's an .exe file, so you just double-click the downloaded file.

[tobyhodges]

I added a link to the central instructions, which are more detailed, in 9c8345e.

[mkcor]

I just tried on Linux x86_64, I downloaded the environment.yml from this PR, but somehow...

$ mv ~/Downloads/environment.yml .
$ conda env create -f environment.yml
Solving environment: failed

CondaValueError: Malformed version string '~': invalid character(s).

$ cat environment.yml 
name: dc-image
channels:
  - conda-forge
dependencies:
  - python>=3.11
  - jupyterlab
  - numpy
  - matplotlib
  - scikit-image
  - ipympl
  - imageio

I tried editing the file by removing the Python version, but got the same error. 🤔

[tobyhodges]

CondaValueError: Malformed version string '~': invalid character(s).

@mkcor is it possible that your conda version needs to be updated?