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 # Node Version Manager [![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/creationix/nvm.svg?branch=master)][3]
 
+## Why? Node has a package manager, NPM, right?
+
+Yes, it does.  `nvm` manages different versions of the node interpreter and core libraries.  Node is powerful, but the power of the Node ecosystem is the thousands of user-contributed libraries.  If you want additional libraries and tools, you use `npm` for that.
+
+So why `nvm`?  Your operating system typically has one supported version of a programming language environment.  So when developers want you to use any other version but the one installed in your operating system, you can't install these packages with `npm` because you have the wrong version of Node. With `nvm`, you have the power and flexibility to run many different versions of the Node platform simultaneously: for development, for testing, for daily use, the way you see fit.
+
 ## Installation
 
 First you'll need to make sure your system has a c++ compiler. For OSX, XCode will work, for Ubuntu, the build-essential and libssl-dev packages work.