I personally do it this way:
sudo apt-get install python g++ make
wget http://nodejs.org/dist/node-latest.tar.gz
tar xvfvz node-latest.tar.gz
cd node-v0.12.0
./configure
make
sudo make install
If you want to install particular version then download the version you want from the Node.js site and execute the last tree steps.
I would strongly suggest not using the default Node.js package from the distribution market, because it would be probably outdated (i.e., the current for the time of writing this in the Ubuntu market is v0.10.25 which is too outdated compared to the latest (v0.12.0)).