Even on ubuntu, I use the github version, thus: Checkout from github: git://github.com/joyent/node.git Now: git checkout v0.4.5 ./configure make

Even on ubuntu, I use the github version, thus: Checkout from github: git://github.com/joyent/node.git Now: git checkout v0.4.5 ./configure make sudo make install node -v There are other ways, but this is pretty simple. Note that when you checkout the tag you will be in a detached HEAD state, which is fine, but when you next want to git pull, make sure you checkout master first, then checkout the next tag you require. You can see all tags with: git tag.