diff --git a/README.markdown b/README.markdown index ff78e28..406202b 100644 --- a/README.markdown +++ b/README.markdown @@ -31,6 +31,12 @@ +## 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 If you're running a system without prepackaged binary available, which means you're going to install nodejs or io.js from its source code, you need to make sure your system has a C++ compiler. For OS X, Xcode will work, for Debian/Ubuntu based GNU/Linux, the `build-essential` and `libssl-dev` packages work.