I recently wanted to update my texlive packages using tlmgr update --all. However, tlmgr did not update anything and instead pointed out that I should install a recent version of TeX Live. So I followed these installation instructions from tug.org. I assumed that this would replace the previous TeX Live installation.
However, after installation was complete, I ran tlmgr init-usertree without success and was told: "user mode already set up". This suggested to me that the new installation conflicted with an existing installation.
Since I had not been working on this computer for some time, I was not sure how I had installed the previous version of TeX Live. I checked if I had perhaps installed the previous version using apt by typing apt search texlive | grep -i install. My previous install probably happened via apt (unfortunately).
I believe I would rather want to use the Tex Live that I installed with the method described on https://tug.org/texlive/quickinstall.html because it is more up-to-date. (The first time I installed Tex Live following these instructions according to which the apt method was fine for most basic use cases but I think the benefits of more recent versions outweighs the simplicity of apt.)
How can I fix my conflicting versions of Tex Live? Can I just use apt to remove the old Tex Live and proceed with only my new version of Tex Live? Is it safe to just delete (or rename) the old texmf folder in my home directory?
I in fact tried renaming the old texmf so that I could initialize user mode using tlmgr. This created a new texmf folder. But when I then tried to tlmgr update --all, it tells me:
(running on Debian, switching to user mode!)(see /usr/share/doc/texlive-base/README.tlmgr-on-Debian.md)TLPDB: not a directory, not loading: /root/texmftlmgr: user mode not initialized, please read the documentation!So that didn't really work.
Can I tell TeXstudio to use only my new installation until I know I can safely remove the previous one?
Basically, how can I clean my conflicting Tex Live setups?
Cheers!