The nodejs package installs node as nodejs, so running nodejs -v should work. If you’re not planning on install the node package which is completely unrelated to NodeJS, you can link node to nodejs:

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

You should then be able to use node as well as nodejs.

Yes. But I created a new droplet and after it the mentioned code for linking node to nodejs helped me. Thanks.

This is an old question but I stumbled upon and thought I would add a few things. Ubuntu 14.04 & 16.04 package repos include a stable but older version of node. If you want a newer, faster version you can install node.js via n

First install node package manager, then install n globally

sudo apt install npm
sudo npm install -g n

You can then install & activate the latest stable version of node:

sudo n latest

Or you can install the latest LTS version. Check here for the LTS schedule or here for a version list.

So as of today Boron is most recent LTS at version 6.10.0, I could install this as:

sudo n 6.10.0

You can then check version and install location:

$ node -v
v6.10.0
$ which node
/usr/local/bin/node

Besides n there is also nvm for version management. Yes the node ecosystem can be confusing but eventually it makes sense.

I recognize now I jumped the gun on recommending n as it has some issues in shared node_modules across versions (uninstalling is also painful). I’ve since tried n, nodenv, nvm & nave for managing versions and nodenv is the best while nvm and nave are worth considering. You can review my article for using nodenv to manage virtual environments in development. I’m going to next write one for using nodenv in facilitation production deployments but perhaps in the interim this can provide some inspiration.