Are you using conda-forge? Solving from over 6TBs of packages can take quite a while. Conda-forge builds everything. This isn't a criticism, but because of that the number of packages is massive.
"You can't use the big channel with all the packages because it has all the packages" isn't an exoneration, it's an indictment.
To answer your question: yes, we were using conda-forge, and then when it stopped building we moved to a mix of conda and a critical subchannel, and then a major GIS library broke on conda and stayed that way for months so we threw in the towel and just used pip + a few touch-up scripts. Now that everyone else has followed suit, pip is the place where things "just work" so now we just use pip, no touchups required.
To answer your question: yes, we were using conda-forge, and then when it stopped building we moved to a mix of conda and a critical subchannel, and then a major GIS library broke on conda and stayed that way for months so we threw in the towel and just used pip + a few touch-up scripts. Now that everyone else has followed suit, pip is the place where things "just work" so now we just use pip, no touchups required.