From Ubuntu 12.04 to 13.04, an old version (0.6.x) of Node is in the standard repository. To install, just run:
$ sudo apt-get install nodejs
Obtaining a recent version of Node or installing on older Ubuntu and other apt-based distributions may require a few extra steps. Example install:
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install -y python-software-properties python g++ make
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.js
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install nodejs
source: https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Installing-Node.js-via-package-manager#ubuntu-mint
