StrongLoop (http://strongloop.com) has put together a supported version of Node that is prepackaged with several useful tools. This is a Node distribution in the same sense in which Fedora or Ubuntu are Linux distributions. StrongLoop brings together several useful packages, some of which were written by StrongLoop. StrongLoop tests the packages together, and distributes installable bundles through their website.

The packages in the distribution include Express, Passport, Mongoose, Socket.IO, Engine.IO, Async, and Request. We will use all of those modules in this book.

To install, navigate to the company home page and click on the Products link. They offer downloads of precompiled packages for both RPM and Debian Linux systems, as well as Mac OS X and Windows. Simply download the appropriate bundle for your system.

For the RPM bundle, type the following:

$ sudo rpm -i bundle-file-name

For the Debian bundle, type the following:

$ sudo dpkg -i bundle...