Recently working with NodeJS ect. I installed quite different packages, for different tutorials + projects. I finally ended up with this kind of configuration:

louis@louis:~$ node -v
v5.10.0
louis@louis:~$ nodejs -v
v6.2.1
louis@louis:~$ npm -v
3.8.3

Can you explain the difference between these?

Recently working with NodeJS ect. I installed quite different packages, for different tutorials + projects. I finally ended up with this kind of configuration:

louis@louis:~$ node -v
v5.10.0
louis@louis:~$ nodejs -v
v6.2.1
louis@louis:~$ npm -v
3.8.3

Can you explain the difference between these?

• javascript
• node.js
• npm

Share Follow edited Jun 7, 2016 at 10:32 JJJ 33.2k2020 gold badges9494 silver badges103103 bronze badges asked Jun 7, 2016 at 10:30 Louis LecocqLouis Lecocq 1,81433 gold badges1818 silver badges4040 bronze badges 4

• 1 What operating system are you on? Some Ubuntu packages might install Node.js as nodejs instead of just node. In fact, you seem to have two different versions of Node.js installed. – E_net4 Commented Jun 7, 2016 at 10:33
• 2 Although not a bad question, this looks like a question that does not belong on SO. – Randy Commented Jun 7, 2016 at 10:34
• @randy thought the same but was not sure where to assign it with a flag. Since it is a programming tool, it does not fit into super-user, it is not highlevel enough for server fault, etc. – Toxantron Commented Jun 7, 2016 at 10:36
• Quite agree. Sorry @randy. I also thought about it before posting my question. But there's not a lot of place with such a developer munity. And as there is some post that also talk about configurations/build. It finally fit the purpose of SO. In my opinion. – Louis Lecocq Commented Jun 7, 2016 at 10:37

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3 Answers 3

Sorted by: Reset to default 4

Your situation

Seems you have two different versions of nodejs installed, possibly one was installed from sources and one from package manager like apt.

---

louis@louis:~$ node -v
v5.10.0

This returns older version of nodejs that you installed, I remend you to remove it.

---

louis@louis:~$ nodejs -v
v6.2.1

This returns the current version of nodejs installed, possibly you installed it using package manager, I remember in Ubuntu it es by nodejs executable name.

I suggest you to create link like this

sudo ln -s `which nodejs` /usr/bin/node

so it will be available using node mand also.

nodejs vs node on ubuntu 12.04

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louis@louis:~$ npm -v
3.8.3

This is just version of your npm program and has nothing to do with nodejs version.

Better solution

Uninstall all versions that you have and install node using nvm to switch between old/new versions easily

To install or update nvm, you can use the install script using cURL:

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent./creationix/nvm/v0.31.1/install.sh | bash

or Wget:

wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent./creationix/nvm/v0.31.1/install.sh | bash

---

Usage

To download, pile, and install the latest v5.0.x release of node, do this:

nvm install 5.0

And then in any new shell just use the installed version:

nvm use 5.0

https://github./creationix/nvm#install-script

I assume you are using ubuntu. node and nodejs are the same tool, but node is the legacy version and nodejs the current development branch.

npm however is the package manager for node(js).

Here's a bit of helpful information to add to the discussion and which will hopefully help you out regarding node version clashes.

Adding the NodeJs version to your $PATH in your .bash_profile (or it may be called .bashrc or .bashconfig) file will ensure your node calls from the terminal will use the latest and not the legacy version.

Using NVM (Node Version Manager) will allow you to install and change node versions on the fly with 'nvm use 6.0.0' and is highly remended as some NPM packages will break if using a node and npm version that isn't correct for certain npm packages in your node_modules dir. You will also have to add NVM to your $PATH in this case, but it's easy enough to do with:

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

More details can be found in the link provided.

The OP's question was answered, I know, but I think pointing the OP to a better solution is also a good idea.