How to install node.js on Ubuntu Linux

Update node source

$ curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_5.x | sudo -E bash -

Check which nodejs will be installed

$ apt-cache policy nodejs
nodejs:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 5.3.0-1nodesource1~trusty1
  Version table:
     5.3.0-1nodesource1~trusty1 0
        500 https://deb.nodesource.com/node_5.x/ trusty/main amd64 Packages
     0.10.25~dfsg2-2ubuntu1 0
        500 http://us-west-1.ec2.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty/universe amd64 Packages

Here candidate is 5.3.0-1nodesource1~trusty1 which is expected value.

Install node

This will install node and npm both.

$ sudo apt-get install nodejs
dpkg -L nodejs | grep /bin/
/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/semver/bin/semver
/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/which/bin/which
/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/mkdirp/bin/usage.txt
/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/mkdirp/bin/cmd.js
/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/nopt/bin/nopt.js
/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/request/node_modules/har-validator/bin/har-validator
/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/request/node_modules/node-uuid/bin/uuid
/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/bin/node-gyp.js
/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npm
/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npm-cli.js
/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npm.cmd
/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/node-gyp-bin
/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/node-gyp-bin/node-gyp.cmd
/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/node-gyp-bin/node-gyp
/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/read-package-json.js
/usr/bin/nodejs
/usr/bin/npm

Note that if you have older versions of legacy node packages installed (node-legacy, npm), it is better to remove them before installing latest nodejs from deb.nodesource.com.

Check the installation

$ dpkg -l nodejs
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name                                Version                Architecture           Description
+++-===================================-======================-======================-============================================================================
ii  nodejs                              5.3.0-1nodesource1~tru amd64                  Node.js event-based server-side javascript engine
$ node --version
v5.3.0
$ npm --version
3.3.12

Self update npm

To self update npm to latest version as npm installed with node may not be latest.

$ sudo npm install -g npm