Comment 5 for bug 1861327

There's something deeply wrong with the way Ubuntu packages Node.

Here's the NodeJS project's release timeline:
https://nodejs.org/en/about/releases/

Node LTS releases are even-numbered and supported for 30 months.
Node 10 isn't even on there anymore. Node 12 is the oldest currently available, in maintenance mode, until it goes fully EOL at the end of April 2022. It's also the Node packaged in Ubuntu 21.10, released last month, which isn't EOL until July 2022. So for the last 3 months of 21.10's life, we've arranged for it to be running a dead NodeJS with no security updates. Presumably the Ubuntu NodeJS packagers have volunteered to backport them? But they can't backport the modules, which is what NodeJS exists to run.

Unless 22.04 skips right ahead to Node 16, it's going to once again ship a NodeJS that's scheduled to go out of support and be left behind by the module ecosystem an entire year before the next Ubuntu LTS is ready. And since the LTS support timeline extends beyond that, if the package isn't bumped during the release lifecycle, it will spend a lot of its life being terminally out of date relative to what people need it for (running modules).

We ought to have a plan to provide an in-support Node for the full life of the LTS release. We do this with other packages like Firefox, right?