Old Linux mint versions from 1 to 5 provide perl 5.8.8. You could start playing with these as source of perl scripts supposedly compatible with your Redhat

That's strange advice. It's probably discontinued years ago an unsupported.

OP has a choice - either read perldoc time-to-time to check perl compatibility and check module compatibility (check Make/Build.PL scripts), or install RHEL family (for example CentOS 5.9)