A lot of tutorials, Stack Overflow answers, walk throughs, etc. will not want to assume that you know how to use /usr/bin/cpan and will instead suggest that you use your system's package manager, which you are more likely to be familiar with.
This is especially true if you are using a tool written in a particular language, but you don't know that language. For example many people wouldn't care whether crouton is written in Perl, Python or Lisp, they just want a tool they can use. Your average Debian or Ubuntu user is more likely to be familiar with apt-get than with cpan.
If you are looking to program in Perl I recommend installing things by cpan, using perlbrew and/or local::lib. If you are just looking to install a tool you can use, I would recommend using apt-get.
Additionally apt-get has the advantage that non-Perl dependencies will be installed automatically. For example the CPAN module XML::LibXML requires that the libxml2 headers are available on the system; the CPAN distribution has no way of stating that as a dependency, and will simply fail on install if it can find the headers to link against. The Debian package can actually specify that libxml2 is a dependency, and will install the dependency automatically for you.
Despite that if you are looking to use XML::LibXML as a Perl programmer, I would recommend installing it with cpan and installing the libxml2 package via apt-get. Having all your Perl modules installed in the same place - again, via perlbrew or local::lib - will help you keep your sanity in the future. CPAN is preferable to apt-get in this case because not all distributions have been packaged for Debian, and so you get a lot more options if you use CPAN directly.
In summary: TIMTOWTDI ;-)
