I should explain the filesystem layout of node-os a little bit, because it’s a slight depart form what you’ll find on Ubuntu, Redhat, Arch, etc.

I think requiring root privileges in order to install a package is lame. I’ve ditched the concept of global or system packages altogether, the only global executable is node located at /bin/node. The directories /etc, /lib, and /usr contain a few files necessary for node to run. I would love to reduce the number of extra files laying about, but one step at a time.

Any time you run npgk install, the new module will be downloaded into $HOME/lib/node_modules, and executables will be linked into $HOME/bin. Every user experiences a unique system, and every user has access to npkg. You do not need root privileges to install packages.

For example, if there are two users on the system bob and kim, and bob runs npkg install ncurl, the filesystem will look roughly like:

/home/
  bob/
    bin/ncurl --> ../lib/node_modules/ncurl/ncurl.js
    lib/node_modules/ncurl
  kim/
    bin/
    lib/node_modules/

root and init

When the kernel is ready, it will start init as PID 1. In node-os, init is located in /root/bin/init. Init is a module like any other executable. It is available on npm, and can be updated with npkg install. Modules in /root come pre-installed with node-os. They are the necessary modules to boot the system into a usable state.

An example set of default modules might be:

• init
• npkg
• wssh
• nsh