For anything but C, one can't really trust the distributions to care enough for that to be an option. You can install Common Lisp libraries from the Debian repo

For anything but C, one can't really trust the distributions to care enough for that to be an option. You can install Common Lisp libraries from the Debian repositories, but if you do, you'll find yourself in a world of problems since they are mostly severely out of date, if they work at all. Far too many times have I had to explain to newcomers to Common Lisp that they can't install stuff from the repositories, and instead have to download their CL implementation separately and then use Quicklisp.