Disclaimer: New to Perl, kind of a Linux n00b, etc...

I'm trying to install the latest version of Perl on a Suse 9.0 fresh install. I untarred the tarball, and did the following:
- sh Configure (answered about 3 billion questions)
- The 'make depend' seemed to run OK
- I type in 'make'. It seemed to work OK.
- I typed in 'make test'
It finished but got this error:
lib/ExtUtils/t/Embed....................../usr/lib/gcc-lib/i586-suse-linux/3.3.1/../../../../i586-suse-linux/bin/ld: cannot find -lperl
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
FAILED at test 1
I humbly ask wisdom as to what I did to screw this up. It worked OK on another identical system.