No worries, IrishMonk -- love the name you chose, BTW. :)

We've all been there, at one time (new to OS, or Perl). INMHO, you made the right choice picking a *NIX OS, over Win$.

Well, as to the command

perl -V
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I should have noted that it was CaSe SeNsiTiVe. Meaning -V isn't the same as -v as it appears you used. No matter. You've given enough clues to help get things on the right track.

Normally, for a situation/environment like the one you're using. Perl users often pick PerlBrew. However, it isn't the only choice, and many times, isn't the best. Besides, at this point, it would probably only serve to overwhelm you.

What you're going to need to do first off. Is to somehow prepend your $PATH with your $HOME directory. Often your shell -- bash, in your case, rc file.

For example. On the box I'm writing this to you from; I'm running csh, on FreeBSD. So, for me, all of my Shell Environment settings are located in ~/.cshrc. The tilde slash (~/) is a shell shortcut for your $HOME folder/directory.
The $PATH statement, as listed/controlled by my shell is set thusly, in my .cshrc

set path = (/sbin /bin /usr/sbin /usr/bin /usr/games /usr/local/sbin /
+usr/local/bin $HOME/bin)
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According to the man pages for bash (link above). You'll need to edit ~/.bashrc, adjusting your $PATH accordingly. Perhaps pre-pending $HOME to the list of directories, rather than Appending, as in the path statement I listed, from my own.

There are other "tricks" that can be employed, where Perl is concerned. But in all honesty. What you appear to be trying to do, is going to be a great deal more work, than I think you want to attempt.

If it were just $HOME, it wouldn't be too bad. As many users face this situation, and as a result, thare many possible solutions available. But your use of a "thumb drive"/"USB stick" I think possibly complicates matters, more than usual -- more information needed.

Top of the evenin' to you.

--Chris