The Problem

I have an old laptop which runs Ubuntu 16.04, and I want to install node-red.

The Solution

This time the solution is really simple:

$ sudo apt-get install nodejs-legacy
$ sudo apt-get install npm
$ sudo npm install -g --unsafe-perm node-red

The first command instructs the operating system to install node-js (which is the base for node-red).

The second one installs a packagemanager for node-js (which does the same as apt-get, yast, yum, … for Linux, but for node-js)

The third command installs node-js.

If you want to run node-red simply type node-red into the commandline, and navigate the the url that is shown in the output of the command (in my case http://127.0.0.1:1880/)

$ node-red
20 Mar 22:47:12 - [info] 

Welcome to Node-RED
===================

20 Mar 22:47:12 - [info] Node-RED version: v0.16.2
20 Mar 22:47:12 - [info] Node.js  version: v4.2.6
20 Mar 22:47:12 - [info] Linux 4.4.0-36-generic x64 LE
20 Mar 22:47:12 - [info] Loading palette nodes
20 Mar 22:47:13 - [warn] ------------------------------------------------------
20 Mar 22:47:13 - [warn] [rpi-gpio] Info : Ignoring Raspberry Pi specific node
20 Mar 22:47:13 - [warn] ------------------------------------------------------
20 Mar 22:47:13 - [info] Settings file  : /home/gue/.node-red/settings.js
20 Mar 22:47:13 - [info] User directory : /home/gue/.node-red
20 Mar 22:47:13 - [info] Flows file     : /home/gue/.node-red/flows_gue-thinkpad.json
20 Mar 22:47:13 - [info] Creating new flow file
20 Mar 22:47:13 - [info] Server now running at http://127.0.0.1:1880/
20 Mar 22:47:13 - [info] Starting flows
20 Mar 22:47:13 - [info] Started flows