To clarify some differences:

• ActiveState Perl's default approach to installing modules is via PPM -- binary packages. Strawberry Perl's default approach is direct from CPAN. PPM has some advantages (no need to install external libraries to get some modules working) and disadvantages (some modules on CPAN may not be available in PPM form).

• Strawberry Perl includes a compiler and dmake. ActiveState Perl does not, though it will pretty much auto-detect and configure itself appropriately if you install either the MinGW compiler or the MS Visual C++ compiler.

Generally, I would say that Strawberry Perl is closer to a unix experience, with all the benefits and disadvantages of that.

Personally, I use Strawberry Perl, do my editing with Vim for Windows, and have installed many of the Windows ports of unix command line tools (e.g. ls, cp, mv, grep) -- though I removed all the gzip, tar, etc. ones as they may not work quite right and some Perl tools may try to use them if they are in the PATH. I find this easier and faster than firing up a virtual machine every time I want to play with Perl.

Update: I want to add that ActiveState Perl, does support installing from CPAN, if configured correctly, though XS modules obviously won't work without a compiler.

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