Setup a MEAN Application on Ubuntu 14.04

MEAN, short for MongoDB, Express, AngularJS, and Node, is a fullstack JavaScript framework that simplifies and accelerates application development by giving you the tools needed to quickly create and deploy your application. In this article, I will show you how to install and create a basic MEAN application on Ubuntu 14.04 x64.

Step 1: Install Node.js

The first thing that you will want to do is to install Node. There are several ways of doing this, but for now we will use a NodeSource. For stability purposes, we will be installing Node.js 10.40. The latest version of Node should work, but there is no promise of stability. To install, run the following command:

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_0.10 | sudo -E bash -
apt-get install -y nodejs

After the installation is complete, run node -v and the version will be displayed. Re-run the installation if the version is older than v0.10.40.

Step 2: Install dependencies

We will need Gulp and Bower for using Mean.js. To install those, run the following:

npm install -g gulp
npm install -g bower

Once these are installed, you can proceed to the next step.

Step 3: Install Mean.js

Installing Mean.js is very simple, Run the following command to install the cli needed to create your application:

npm install -g mean-cli

Once the installation is complete, run mean -v. The version will be at least 0.10.14.

Step 4: Setup and deploy an application

To setup a project, run the following command:

mean init server
cd server && npm install
gulp

Upon success, you will be able to go to http://[SERVER_IP]:3000 in your browser (change the IP accordingly) to see the default Mean.js application page.