TeX distributions are getting more complex and much bigger, while at the same time providing a _much_ better user experience than a few years ago. TeX live for example has the "full" distribution scheme as default and the users always never have to install things found somewhere on the net by themselves. It just works for most people around us.
As soon as you start splitting things up, it's hard for the users to follow.
"We" keep getting questions from Linux users that "package X is not available and how can I install it? I've tried [many horrible things]?" The answer is usually "install package texlive-something" of your distro. For these users the user experience is worse than installing the full texlive.
One really nice thing is with current texlive (> 2011) is that you can get updates between release cycles. This also makes (IMO) the user experience much better but is in contradiction to what most distros need.
I think 12.10 will include texlive 2011 or 2012 (hopefully).
TeXLive 2012 in Ubuntu 12.04. I just found it so I haven't tried it yet.
One of the interesting problems I have had with various parts of the TexLive community (not sure if it is everywhere) is an unwillingness to discuss support for older versions.
It is one thing to desire that cutting-edge releases release relatively cutting-edge versions. It is very different to insist that long term support distros keep up with the cutting edge.
My software runs on servers. I have no expectation that we will see current TexLive versions installed and every expectation that we won't. Yet we do the best we can and when something blows up (xelatex complaining about being outdated and having to be configured from the command-line) we address it. It's just discouraging to hear over and over that we should be requiring the latest and greatest.
But, the scripts we use to build the stuff etc are all in the archive and documented, so anyone can checkout the 2010 or older release, and start a separate repository putting only fixes in. I don't see any reason not to do it, besides that nobody will do it.
If I am working on an older version, I don't expect you to backport bugfixes of CTAN packages. However, if I am asking for help because latex won't run without extra configuration because it says it is too old, getting an idea of how to fix it instead of being reflexively told "upgrade" would be nice. In the end when that happened to me I had to figure it out on my own.
Here's the thing "that's a bug that was more recently fixed. You might try going about this in a different way." is perfectly valid support for server software. It would even be enough to say "that package seems to work for me on a newer version."
But when it comes to running LaTeX and there is a time-bomb in the program, it is nice to know how to get around it in an automated, non-interactive environment.
So no, that doesn't work. What does work and keeps our customers happy is making sure that what we have works with what versions they get from their vendors.
TeX is not just for desktops. It is a wonderful part of an automatic document generation system.
In case you are wondering what we are doing, the project is LedgerSMB (http://www.ledgersmb.org) and we use TeXLive mostly for generating PDF invoices, purchase orders, etc, along with Perl modules like Template::Plugin::Latex (unfortunately XeTeX requires hacking some of our dependencies currently :-( but that's not the TeXLive folks' fault!)
Anyway I think we are still supporting TexLive 2007.....
These often contain bugs that have long been fixed or are incompatible with tools they interface with (e.g. gnuplot/pgf).
I have written several books using TexShop - love it.
$ tlmgr option repository http://ctan.mackichan.com/
$ tlmgr update --self
tlmgr: Cannot load TeX Live database from http://ctan.mackichan.com/