where would I go to find an install of 5.8.1
Generally, use perlhist to find out who released it, do a s/name in perlhist/cpan name/ and if you're really lucky with the substitution you'll come up with jarkko and from there you get this.

update: That was poor advice, sorry. Use the other locations mentioned by the Monks below.

Or, get a hold of Git and clone the perl repository.

how to install it
Although I've never tried 5.8.1 specifically, I've found Devel::PatchPerl does a really good job for older perls

Update

I cannot recommend VirtualBox highly enough if you want to play around with new OS installs.

In reply to Re: Windows type needs to set up Linux with Perl 5.8.1 to match PAUSE by FunkyMonk
in thread Windows type needs to set up Linux with Perl 5.8.1 to match PAUSE by hsmyers

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