>>101584489
>theres a 99% chance op did something utterly retarded, like drag and drop the node executable from a thumb drive onto his laptop and tried to run it, or something similarly dumb.
It's Linux with internet, so I wouldn't do that. All I did was something like
# npm was giving OP error
sudo apt autoremove npm
sudo apt autoremove node
sudo apt-get install nodejs
# npm still giving OP error