[tldistro] linux mint texlive 2017

[Bob Tennent]

I recently discovered that sty files that used \iftex were
failing on Linux Mint apparently because the distro texlive
packages are based on TeXLive2017. But if one installs
current texlive, the package manager insists on installing
the distro packages as dependencies for any TeX-related
packages not in texlive.

Is there a need for a "dummy" package similar to

https://ctan.org/pkg/texlive-dummy-enterprise-linux-8

or is there some other solution to this problem?

Bob T.