What do they leave to be desired? Style is a personal preference, of course - but merit? Every single djb implementation I've seen (a lot of them) is fast, efficient, secure, and clear, once you get his style.
There's a reason why libsodium's tag line is "P(ortable|ackageable) NaCl-based crypto library".
The word of distros/packagers isn't gospel, but it counts for a lot, considering that (for better or worse) most people won't even think about using something not available as a package.