CPAN.pm worked great for me when I was on windows and contiues to work great for me on linux. For pure Perl modules, it will work flawlessly. For modules that have XS/C components it will work with ActiveStae if you have the M$ compiler. If you don't have the M$ compiler or another compiler, nothing will work, so CPAN isn't any worse off than any other method. Sometimes I ended up installing most of a dependency list via CPAN and then filled in one or two things that didn't work with ppm. I don't know about the Catalyst Bundle, but I think the other modules on your list are pure Perl. If you don't already have DBD::mysql, that needs compiling, but ppms are available.