DBD::Firebird added to the list I posted before. I can't say I was positively surprised in installation and startup. OpenSUSE had the packages readily available, so installation went smooth. service started immediate, but then the shit hits the fan: I find the quick start guide way too Windows-minded and none of the commands is intuitive. Furthermore, the DBD installation is a hell: it does not find the needed libraries of header files in what I thought were pretty default locations. The firebird (and firebird-devel) packages installs the libfbclient.so.2 but no (symbolic) link to libfbclient.so. Creating of a new database has no command-line-tool. All and all I am not very charmed yet.