Why do I get old versions of nodejs and npm when installing with apt-get?

Question

I have executed the following command in Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nodejs modejs-legacy npm

I have the versions

npm -v
1.3.10

nodejs -v
v0.10.25

These are older than the recommended versions for AngularJS 2.

Why does apt-get download old version? How do I update to newer versions?

possible duplicate of [How can I update Node.js and NPM to the next versions?](http://stackoverflow.com/q/6237295/710446). It doesn't answer the "why?" question, but that answer to that is, "because old version are what's in Canonical's software repositories for your version of Ubuntu" — apsillers, Jan 04 '16 at 15:26
Both Debian and RHEL distros have old versions of node and npm. Not sure why node isn't supporting their linux packages, but it sure makes running servers tricky. — ssube, Jan 04 '16 at 15:39

score 24 · Accepted Answer · edited May 21 '22 at 08:12

24

Debian/Ubuntu has old version in their package manager, you have to use custom PPA repository as stated here:

https://github.com/nodesource/distributions/blob/master/README.md#debinstall

Setup it with:

curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_lts.x | sudo -E bash -

Then install with Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install --yes nodejs

edited May 21 '22 at 08:12

Sнаđошƒаӽ

answered Jan 04 '16 at 15:35

michelem

This was the missing piece of the puzzle for me trying to install to Raspberry Pi. – David Clarke Jul 13 '16 at 22:23
Doing this saves the linked repo with a higher priority than the Ubuntu's package manager's default? – Nic Szerman Jun 27 '17 at 00:06
Yes it will be overwritten by this – michelem Jun 27 '17 at 07:45
4

I understand this is an old thread, but would you happen to know why ubuntu/debian's package manager doesn't update this automatically? – Tugdual Kerjan Apr 23 '20 at 14:45
Don't know, lazy maintainers? – michelem Apr 24 '20 at 15:04
This seems to answer the question of how to get the current version, not old versions. – Alex Harvey Sep 30 '21 at 09:44
1

in 2021 use `nvm` to install any node version – michelem Oct 07 '21 at 07:01
Adding a comment so that Google picks up the terms I used when searching: the `SyntaxError: Unexpected identifier` for `import` statements is caused by the outdated version of `npm`. – Matt Raymond Jul 30 '22 at 19:48

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 20 '19 at 01:25

To get the latest version the easiest thing to do is install nvm. nvm install instructions

install nvm curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.35.0/install.sh | bash
nvm install v10.15.3
(optional) set default nvm alias default v10.15.3

2 Answers2