Firstly I'd suggest that almost all Linux, Unix, or *BSD variants should be able to install directly from CPAN. However many people dislike that if they have a packaging system in place upon their host.

It can get problematic if you, say, install Perl modules from CPAN but your distribution has a perl upgrade and breaks them all. In that case using the packages provided for your distributions may be the best bet. (That is what I recommend anyway.)

So from that point of view I find using Debian nice and simple. Many modules are packaged as .deb binary files, with a nice naming convention so they are easy to find.

e.g. HTML::Template -> libhtml-template-perl, CGI::Application -> libcgi-application-perl.

For the modules which aren't available as Debian packages you can easily create them - just by using a wrapper tool around CPAN's scripts:

• Creating Debian binary packages of Perl modules

The short version is:

apt-get install dh-make-perl build-essential
dh-make-perl --build --cpan HTML::Template
[download]

If you want quality assurance, let me suggest you try ActiveState Perl on your existing platforms. They include the Perl Package Manager (PPM) that installs prepackaged binaries from the ASPN module repository (and other repositories as well). There is a slight delay from CPAN, but they automatically update to the latest versions within a week or so -- assuming that they pass an automated build process.