Outdated packages in distributions

Telling that distribution packages are outdated is pointless. Out of the air, 95% of people will just spare themselves trouble by just using TexLive as shipped in their distribution. "apt-get install texlive" is always easier than to hunt the latest version on some website, install it and cope with the integration troubles because now you have several incompatible versions installed on your system.

What are the feature described in this article not available in the version shipped in Debian Jessie (late 2014 version of TexLive) for example?