The default nodejs package on Ubuntu installs an ancient version of Node/NPM
that often doesn't work properly with contemporary code.
As of the time of writing (October 12, 2022), Ubuntu's repository contains Node 8.10.0, which is 6 years out of date.
To install the latest version of Node (currently: 18.10.0)
sudo snap refresh
sudo snap install node --channel 18/stable
You can use snap info node to get more information about the latest available
versions.
You can use node --version to verify you are running the most recent version
of Node.
$ node --version
v18.10.0
To install an executable package from NPM (such as the TypeScript compiler),
you use npm install -g PACKAGE. By default, this attempts to install
PACKAGE in a privileged directory, thus requiring sudo to execute
successfully.
In order to avoid running NPM as root, do the following:
mkdir ~/.npm-packages
npm config set prefix "${HOME}/.npm-packages"
Edit ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc with
NPM_PACKAGES="${HOME}/.npm-packages"
export PATH=$NPM_PACKAGES/bin:$PATH
Now, npm install -g will install to ~/.npm-packages
npm install -g typescript