Node.js

Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform runtime environment for developing server-side Web applications.

npm

Node Package Manager(npm) is a package manager for Node.js with hundreds of thousands of packages. It’s main goal is automated dependency and package management.

nvm

Node version Manager(nvm) is used to manage multiple versions of node installations on same machine. You don’t need it usually, so we are not looking at it now.

Installing node and npm

There are several ways to install node and npm. The following installation method worked fine for me.

Type these commands in your terminal.

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echo 'export PATH=$HOME/local/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.bashrc
. ~/.bashrc
mkdir ~/local
mkdir ~/node-latest-install
cd ~/node-latest-install
curl http://nodejs.org/dist/node-latest.tar.gz | tar xz --strip-components=1
./configure --prefix=~/local
make install #this step takes some time
curl https://www.npmjs.org/install.sh | sh

The above method of installation is strongly inspired from this gist.

Now you have node and npm installed on your machine. You can check it by running the commands below.

node -v
npm -v

This will display the current version of node and npm installed.

That’s it! Now you’re all set to build some amazing stuff with node.