How to Install Node.js on OpenSUSE Linux

What is Node.js and What Does It do?

Node.js is a JavaScript runtime built on Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine. It allows you to run JavaScript code outside of a web browser, on the server side.

Node.js is often used for building web servers and developing server-side applications. It is designed to be lightweight, efficient, and scalable, and it uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model to maximize performance.

Node.js is available for a variety of platforms, including Linux distributions. It can be installed on a Linux system using a package manager such as zypper (on OpenSUSE) or apt (on Debian and Ubuntu).

Once Node.js is installed, you can use it to run JavaScript scripts and programs, or to build and run web servers and other server-side applications. Node.js also has a large ecosystem of open-source libraries and packages that can be used to extend its functionality.

How to Install Node.js on OpenSUSE Linux

To install Node.js on OpenSUSE Linux, you can use the package manager zypper. Here are the steps to install Node.js on OpenSUSE Linux:

1. First, update the list of available packages by running the following command:

sudo zypper refresh

2. Install the Node.js package by running the following command:

sudo zypper install nodejs

This will install the latest stable version of Node.js.

3. Verify that Node.js was installed successfully by running the following command:

node -v

This should display the version number of Node.js that you just installed.

Alternatively, you can also install Node.js using the Node Version Manager (nvm). To do this, you will need to first install nvm, and then use it to install and manage different versions of Node.js.

To install nvm, follow these steps:

1. Download the nvm installation script by running the following command:

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.36.0/install.sh | bash

2. Activate nvm by adding the following lines to your .bashrc or .bash_profile file:

export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"  # This loads nvm
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/bash_completion" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/bash_completion"  # This loads nvm bash_completion

3. Reload your terminal or open a new terminal window to apply the changes.
4. Install the latest stable version of Node.js by running the following command:

nvm install node

You can also specify a specific version of Node.js to install, such as nvm install 10.16.3.

To switch between different versions of Node.js, use the nvm use command followed by the version number. For example, to switch to Node.js version 10.16.3, you would run nvm use 10.16.3.