Installing globally failed too. Thought i commented that in the replies. Ive managed to get electron running on my other non debian based distro with no problems.
Ive also managed to use electron forge no problem on this OS used in the bug report. But i have not been able to get it to install per their directions. Even when trying to install globally so something must be going on?
It cannot be approved as a bug sadly
But for help I will recommend you to try to get assistance from thier Slack channel which is the best way to get it working as they have already mentioned it cannot be considered as a bug.
There are several errors due to different conditions while installing electron I will advise you maybe google out about it or try out once in thier slack.
Just for your assurance I tried out installing electron in my Debian based Ubuntu GNOME 17.10
and was successful in installing it
I would recommend you to try this command once
sudo npm install -g electron --unsafe-perm=true --allow-rootI have attached a screenshot below -
I hope this would be helpful to you
Node version - 9.11.1(Latest)