Setup NPM

setup_npm.md

Install make

You will probably need build essential tools

# Ubuntu install build tools:
sudo apt-get install -y build-essential

Install Node.js

Node installation instructions

The instructions for Ubuntu/Debian:

# confirm the version of Ubuntu is supported
lsb_release -a
# should show Ubuntu version 20 or higher

# Update APT
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y ca-certificates curl gnupg
sudo mkdir -p /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/gpgkey/nodesource-repo.gpg.key | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/nodesource.gpg

# Get repo for Node.js version 20
NODE_MAJOR=20
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/nodesource.gpg] https://deb.nodesource.com/node_$NODE_MAJOR.x nodistro main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nodesource.list

# Install Node.js
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nodejs -y

Setup NPM

Avoid having to use sudo with npm on Ubuntu:

# Make a local directory for NPM
mkdir ~/.npm-global

# Configure NPM to use npm-global for non-root access
npm config set prefix '~/.npm-global'

# Add .npm-global/bin to $PATH
# Change ~/.profile to ~/.zshrc if you are running in zsh shell like on macos
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.npm-global/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.profile

# Update the local $PATH (don't forget the leading . with a space after it)
. ~/.profile

Please do not recommend users to use https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_12.x. It can break the system, as happened to a friend, and is generally less secure than installation from Debian/Ubuntu packages.

Simple apt install nodejs is enough. The version in Debian stable is supported by bos, so there's no problem. Users with older system should just upgrade the OS instead of making "franken Debian".

Ubuntu generally has newer packages than Debian stable, so the same applies in that case.