Installing Node.js

The current version of the latest Node.js release is five. This is a stable short-term support release, which should serve as a bridge between the latest Long Term Support and the following one.

Let's start our journey through Node.js with a Node.js installation. Installers are available both for Windows and Mac operating systems at http://www.nodejs.org/download/. Linux users can either build Node.js from the available Linux binaries or can make use of their package manager, as Node.js is available with most of the popular package repositories for different Linux distributions. Currently, there are two versions available in the repositories — €”the LTS Version 4.x and the stable 5.x. By default, the package manager points to the LTS release, so we should explicitly tell the manager to install the 5.x Version via the following command:

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_5.x | sudo -E bash -
apt-get install nodejs

For now, let's install Node.js from its installer...