Most Linux distributions come with Perl installed. I'm not familiar with Mandrake, though. The quick way to check is to type   % perl -v at a shell prompt. If that works, find out where Perl is installed by typing   % which perl The path to the perl executable is liable to be either /usr/bin/perl or /usr/local/bin/perl, though it might be elsewhere. Wherever it is, you'll need to include that path in the "shebang" line at the top of your Perl file. E.g.,

  #!/usr/bin/perl
  use strict;
  print "Hello World\n";
[download]

The "shebang" line is how Linux (or, more generally, Unixes), know what program to run to interpret the script.