Node.js is a software platform that is typically used to build large scale (most frequently server-side) applications. It uses Javascript as its scripting language and it can deliver high performance because of it’s non-blocking I/O and single-threaded event loop.
Node.js is a combination of Google V8 Javascript engine, libuv (library which abstracts asynchronous evented I/O, making Node.js cross-platform) and a core library written mostly in Javascript. Node.js was created by Ryan Dahl and it is currently being maintained by Isaac Schlueter.
There are a lot of tutorials suggesting compiling from source, we strongly advise again that. For most of the time, package maintainers know the software very well and you will get the latest release without having to compile from scratch.
The following will work on any release of Ubuntu, including Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Ubuntu 12.10 and Ubuntu 13.04. It will help you install Node.js on Ubuntu without compiling from source. You can run the following command on your cloud server to get started and install the latest Node.js release on your server:
$ apt-get update
$ apt-get install -y python-software-properties software-properties-common
$ add-apt-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.js
$ apt-get update
$ apt-get install nodejs
That is it! Once you have done that, you will be rolling with the latest stable Node.js release without having to worry about compiling anything. If you need to upgrade Node.js at anytime when a new release comes out, you can do it directly from the package manager, without having to recompile from scratch. Just another reason why you should always look for packages before installing from source.
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