Can you show us the source of your test APP? You didn't just cut and paste that little code in the synopsis and expected it to work, did you? There is a tabframe example called tabframe.pl under the example directory of the Tk::TabFrame package. You should have a look at that example.
That's odd, I ran the script you provided, it didn't have any problems. Now that could be a problem with your Tk::TabFrame installation it seems, or even Tk installation. How did you install the module? Did you download and unpack the source, and then perl Makefile.PL, make install, make test to install the module?
This is actually under a windows box -- I havn't loaded it up in Linux yet (havn't figured out how to setup wireless in Linux yet, that's why lol). What I've done was simply take the .pm source and throw it into my Tk directory (C:\Perl\site\lib\Tk\TabFrame.pm) -- this has worked for everything *but* this. I'll load it up into Linux later and see. Could very well just be Windows not liking me again lol.