New Installation Instructions (updated Jan 26, 2018)
The following instructions are somewhat easier than the preceeding ones, but they have not been tested on windows 10 yet. Should an installation attempt fail, fall back to the older instructions below.
Update: They have actually been successfully tested by Jeremy in person.
A) This tutorial assumes you already have a functional anaconda installation.
Moreover, if you don’t have git installed on your machine, install it by following these instructions: Git - Book
B) Now, move into a directory where you are comfortable installing the Fastai repo, with its libraries and required packages.
Now you got to clone that repo as follows:
git clone GitHub - fastai/fastai: The fastai deep learning library
C) Once the cloning process finishes, be sure to be in the directory created by git for the Fastai repository, and type:
conda env create -f environment-win.yml
followed by:
activate fastai
This will install the required packages and their dependencies into the fastai environment by leveraging the file environment-win.yml prepared by Fast.ai16.
D) Now, open jupyter:
(fastai)> jupyter notebook
and create a new notebook (or open one of the lessons’ notebooks). Check if an appropriate kernel has been installed by the preceeding command(s). If you find out you don’t have any kernel other than the base one (usually named python 3.6), you got to install it manually:
(fastai)>python -m ipykernel install --user --name fastai --display-name “fastAI custom”
Once you open jupyter, you will select fastAI custom from the available kernels.
That would be all.
Remind that you will probably need to edit some lessons’ notebooks code, or at least the parts where you interact with the filesystem from inside the notebook.
Indeed, Fastai notebooks are written down aiming at linux systems, so if you call, for example, ls -la | head, it won’t work (quite obviously) on Windows.
Accessing the workstation remotely:
one may want to log in into such workstation remotely. In that case, there are various options, for example:
Using remote desktop (mind that it’s slow if you have a slow or high-latency connection)
Just leaving the notebook server on (unpractical: you would not be able to run administration tasks)
Using the Windows Subsystem for Linux, AKA “linux on windows” with tmux (install LoW from windows store)
Using an ssh server (which, contrarily to popular belief, is natively supported by Windows, although a bit clumsy to get working. Google for it).