Sure, npm has bad UX. (For an actual example, see the stubborn refusal to follow XDG spec.) This is not an example of that. Defaulting prefix to "/usr/local" is

Sure, npm has bad UX. (For an actual example, see the stubborn refusal to follow XDG spec.) This is not an example of that. Defaulting prefix to "/usr/local" is what every well-behaved Linux package does. It seems odd to install so many packages at the "global" (but not owned by root!) level, that using the "--prefix=~" flag would be a hardship. I just checked; I have three. You can't fault npm for this.