glob is more clear in general. For example, what does <FILE> do? Does it read a line (or all lines in list context) from the global filehandle 'FILE'? Or does it do a glob of 'FILE' in the current working directory? How about <$fh>? If $fh is "/usr/bin/perl*"? How about if $fh is an IO::File object? Or a reference to a global filehandle? If you want a glob, just use the glob function. That's what the <> does under the covers anyway.

As for "stuff being weird" - you may not notice for 6 months... and by then you'll have forgotten that you replaced the system perl, and will beat your head against a wall trying to fix it ;-)