Ubuntu – finding the TeX Live version

The problem with installing texlive 2012 on Ubuntu Precise 12.04 is that if things go wrong there isn't a whole lot of information out there on how to adequately uninstall it. I think it's important to explicitly say uninstall to improve the search results of others. I finally came across a solution which worked for me with the help of LaTeX Users Group on Google Groups.

Link to LaTeX Users Group

sudo apt-get remove texlive*
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo apt-get check

sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/info/texlive*.postrm
sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/info/texlive*.list

sudo dpkg --purge --force-all texlive*
sudo dpkg --purge --force-all tex-common*

sudo apt-get install texlive-latex-base
sudo apt-get install texlive-latex-extra
sudo apt-get install texlive-full

This all assumes that you've added Backports repositories as described here

If you install TeXLive from the ubuntu repositories (Ubuntu software Center). Then tlmgr isn't installed, because all packages should use the system package management system 'apt-get'. Hence you get the error:

tlmgr: command not found

So you will have to install the package manually:

Download algorithm2e.sty here

Then, go to the folder ~/texmf or ~/.texmf it depends, if it doesn't exist create it:

mkdir ~/texmf

and copy algorithm2e.sty to it. Then run:

sudo texhash

put in root password when requested.

unfortunately, the TexLive packages in Ubuntu are not very often updated so some errors might come up.

The alternative is manually installing the entire TexLive distribution and following the guide you posted.

Hope that helps