Download sourcecode

Choose the appropriate sourcecode version by going to http://nodejs.org/#download.

wget http://nodejs.org/dist/v0.6.7/node-v0.6.7.tar.gz # or use curl

Install g++

I found that the g++ is needed to install node.js from sourcecode. Found a hint about installing g++ on Amazon Linux, which basically tells you to do this:

sudo yum install gcc-c++.x86_64

Install openssl

To get ssl support, you need to install openssl-devel.x86_64 which is not installed by default (only binary version). Alternately you can install without ssl support with ./configure –without-ssl. (thanks to my colleague Elias Löfgren for helping out here)

sudo yum install openssl-devel.x86_64

Install make

(thanks Daniel for pointing this out)

sudo yum install -y make.x86_64

Install Node.js

Now you can configure, make, install:

./configure
make
make install