please see this in your documentation :
Installing drivers during setup
text:
“Please uninstall any existing Appium 1.x npm packages (with npm uninstall -g appium ) if you get an installation or startup error.”
this text looks like I can uninstall any existing Appium 1.x npm packages. but stating that the command npm uninstall -g appium will uninstall the existing Appium installation, regardless of the version