"Yes I've read that tutorial but it doesn't answer any of the questions I have asked in this post. I may have asked other general questions in the past but this is a specific question unrelated to other posts. I hope that's ok."

I don't believe you've read this properly then. From A Guide to Installing Modules:

The Basics of Module Installation

Most modules are available from CPAN - the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network. They are supplied in what is known as a tarball. A tarball is a gzip compressed tar file. When a module is made the directory structure it lives in is converted to a single file that contains both the files and the directory information. A program called tar performs this function and the resultant file is called a tar file. Tar files have a .tar file extension. This tar file is then compressed using the gzip (GNU Zip) program. Gzipped files have a .gz extension thus a standard module will be called something like:" Some-Module-0.01.tar.gz

That tutorial then goes on to explain what I've already told you about Modules being pure perl or containing code which needs to be compiled. Which is something you asked about.

If you want to know what a deb file is, look it up, use Google, read the wikipedia article.

For clarification, Cpan, the website is essentially dumb storage. The cpan command line utility can be used to fetch,install and upgrade modules, including their dependencies. This is described in the documentation I've linked you to before.

Think of .deb files as software packages for the Debian (which Ubuntu is based on) operating systems packaging tool (dpkg/apt-get). And the downloads from CPAN as archives for the CPAN tool.

Once again, if you install a module from a .deb file or via apt-get you are altering the system perl. This install method uses a packaging system for your operating system to make it easy for the OS to be maintained and install other applications. The alternatives have been explained to you several times now, re read your previous posts.

"I don't know if it is correct to say something like 'I need the .deb version of a perl module.' Similarly if I don't know if it is correct to say 'I need the CPAN version of a Perl module.'"

Why would you be saying this to anyone? If you wanted to install (a deb file) via apt-get it would fetch it automatically for you from your systems configured software sources. If you want to install your own module from source http://search.cpan.org is the place to go looking. I think you're confusion stems from the following:

These aren't criticisms. I believe these are just the things you need to become acquainted with in order to understand what you want to know at a level you seem to want to understand it.

"I can't discuss my problems with people if I don't know the right terms."

If you have a DBI problem, that's what you say to people. "I have a problem with fetching records from Oracle using DBI". IMHO most of the time your problems wont be dependant on how you installed a module.

Update: Added last sentence.

In reply to Re^3: Help needed with terminology - different formats of modules by marto
in thread Help needed with terminology - different formats of modules by Anonymous Monk

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