I'm an on and off user of LaTeX so I'm not familiar with every package out there. Having said that, whenever I use LaTeX and need to accomplish a certain goal (i.e. generate a list of appendices), I search around and find some kind of solution that involves a package that I didn't know about. I think that's great, I learn something new, and it goes in my template file.
Every now and then, though, my search comes up with a package that, after much wrangling, I find out that it's obsolete. An example of this is just recently I came across the subfigure package and wanted to try it out. Soon after I found out from here that it has become superseded by the subfig package. I usually keep my TeX up-to-date because I like keeping up with new XeLaTeX features.
My question is, is there a map or timeline of what TeX packages should be avoided because there are better ways of doing things? An idea I have is some kind of list of all packages split by what they accomplish, then cancelling out packages whose features are incorporated into and improved upon by newer packages.
Edit: another example is lscape versus pdflscape. The latter implements rotating pages in the final PDF not just for pdftex but also for other drivers such as xetex. The only way I found out about this was Googling latex lscape rotate xelatex, for which the second link leads to the pdflscape texdoc (PDF).
Great answers so far. I'll check them out and see which one works best for me.
Edit 2: Turns out that my question is a bit of a dupe in the sense that a great answer came up on an unrelated question. The nag package apparently consults l2tabu and checks your document. Gotta try it!
Best Answer
Actually subfig isn't maintained anymore.I would use packages like »subcaption« (shipped with caption) or floatrow. A good list of obsolete packages and other outdated stuff can be found in l2tabu.