I really just wanted a server to play around with crontab and have it run node.js scripts. c9.io was not cutting it anymore so I signed up for the free tier on AWS. Their basic linux box is called "Ec2" in the dashboard (here's a guide for creating a new Ec2 linux instance on Amazon AWS). Once you create the server, you'll need to download the keyfile (and usually change the keyfile's permissions). Once you've ssh'ed into the box, you're ready to get node and npm!
When I'm setting up a box with node I also like to reference this excellent guide for installing npm and node.js on a linux instance. The last command for npm "sudo make install" was not working for me, but thankfully someone in the comments pointed out that you need to do this instead: sudo env PATH=$HOME/local/node/bin:$PATH make install.
If you need more details reference that awesome post above. If you're trying to just fly through it below is the important stuff- just the linux commands you'll want to run (tested on AWS Free tier Linux Red Hat):
Update the Linux OS
sudo yum update
Install git and Node.js
sudo yum install gcc-c++ make
sudo yum install openssl-devel
sudo yum install git
git clone git://github.com/joyent/node.git
cd node
Build Latest Version of Node.js from Github Project
Note: use git tag -l to list all versions. You usually want to choose the latest version.
git checkout v0.6.8
./configure
make
sudo make install
Add /usr/local/bin to the secure_path
sudo su
vi /etc/sudoers
Scroll down and find "Defaults secure_path". Add this to the end of the value: :/usr/local/bin
Install NPM
git clone https://github.com/isaacs/npm.git
cd npm
sudo env PATH=$HOME/local/node/bin:$PATH make install
Huzzah!
That's all! Now you can install npm packages and run javascript node files as usual!
sudo npm install forever -g
sudo npm install express -g
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