There are two package in Ubuntu that have similar names, *node* and *nodejs*.
`node` does this,
> Description-en: Amateur Packet Radio Node program. The node program accepts TCP/IP and packet radio network connections and presents users with an interface that allows them to make gateway connections to remote hosts using a variety of amateur radio protocols.
`nodejs` does this,
> Description-en: Node.js event-based server-side javascript engine Node.js is similar in design to and influenced by systems like Ruby's Event Machine or Python's Twisted. It takes the event model a bit further - it presents the event loop as a language construct instead of as a library. Node.js is bundled with several useful libraries to handle server tasks : System, Events, Standard I/O, Modules, Timers, Child Processes, POSIX, HTTP, Multipart Parsing, TCP, DNS, Assert, Path, URL, Query Strings.
Fedora also follows a similar package naming scheme. Because of this, the binary in `nodejs` had to be renamed to `nodejs` from the original `node`. However, this isn't technically kosher: and most nodejs programs (and libraries installed with npm) assume that the node binary is `node`. If you want to get around this the easiest way is just symlink the two together. If you take this route, don't install the `node` package which handles the Amateur Packet Radio stuff.
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/local/bin/node
Alternatively, in the case of node, I'd suggest using [`n`](
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) and not installing `node`. Just install npm (which will install node), then remove npm, then tell apt to clean it up. To do this, simply run
sudo apt-get install npm
sudo npm install -g n
sudo n latest
sudo apt-get --purge remove npm
sudo apt-get autoremove
There are other binary distro managers that even work from a shell script like `nvm` but I personally prefer `n`. Think of `n` like an apt for just one thing: the node binary which it installs to `/usr/local/bin`.
Why are removing npm? We're not. `apt-get --purge remove` can *only* ever remove things installed by the package manager. `n latest` works outside of the package manager. There are two npms if you do this,
1. version installed by the distro (Debian/Ubuntu) using `apt-get`.
2. version installed by `n latest`.
No point in having the distro's older version. And, even worse, if that version works it can potentially install to a different location and have Debian modifications in it that assume Debian install directories. It's better to use either/or but not both.
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