Dev Stack Source

Answer : This looks like you probably installed the chris-lea node.js ppa which is fine. However, you don't install npm from that ppa as it breaks the way debian packages work. Instead, just install nodejs . Once that's installed, run npm -v you should see it's now installed. If you didn't use the chris-lea ppa update your question on what webpage you Googled to find out how to install nodejs on Ubuntu. Try installing NodeJs like this: sudo apt-get install nodejs Since NodeJs installs node and npm Apt doesn't handle dependancy conflicts well, use snap or aptitude; sudo aptitude install npm I had to press "no" to the first solution it proposed, which did not include installing npm (that must be a bug in aptitude) then the second solution I pressed yes to hTHen check npm was installed: npm --version

Answer : You don't. A package manager is central to a specific distribution. Gentoo, Arch, Redhat -- they all use different packaging systems. Gentoo's portage packages usually compile from source, Arch uses its own binary package format, Redhat uses RPM as packaging system -- and Debian as well as Ubuntu and Linux Mint use Debian Packages (.deb). Managing your local installation takes place using graphical frontends like Synaptic and Adept, or command-line tools like apt-get, aptitude and dpkg. Though it is possible to install other package managers on Ubuntu (else they wouldn't be in the repositories), this is not to be recommended for the unexperienced user. One should be quite familiar with packages and package managers, how they work, etc. before even thinking about using them alongside. Otherwise it is very likely to end up with a very broken system -- as one package manager is not aware of the others, they would e.g. overwrite each others files/configurations,...