I began the manual install instructions after the standard way borked out. Installed and updated npm, had to install nodejs-legacy to get node to work, but it apparently installs in strict mode and doesn’t like the way whatever happens when you run sudo npm install -g particle-cli.
Dead-ended there and decided I didn’t have a zillion hours to fix it, thus this post.
Honestly I think I ended up fixing this the last time by giving up and installing po-util too. It’s already done. I hope you guys pay @nrobinson2000 well.