Installing Node on Ubuntu 20.04

Step 1 Do the usual first, i.e.

sudo apt update

and

sudo apt upgrade

Step 2 Make sure npm is up to date as well

npm cache clean -f
npm install -g n #if not already installed
sudo n stable

It might take some doing to achieve the above, as I had a few issues to deal with ion Ubuntu 20..04 Firstly I had to update npm and node :

curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_16.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

Then I had to change the permissions on the node modules directory

sudo chown -R $USER /usr/local/lib/node_modules

Only then could I get sudo npm install -g to work as intended.