I don't think I can help you with your installation.

As for opinions... I love FastCGI. Mod_perl has plenty of benefits, but it also turns everything into a perl process. If you want a really fine tuned server that is optimized for specific cgi's, FastCGI is the way to go. We have used it (FastCGI) on our servers for about two years now. We currently get over 8 million hits a day of dynamic parsed pages (on our web cluster). It wouldn't be possible without FastCGI.

Either way, if your creating a server that will get hit at all, FastCGI and mod_perl will save you. And both will force you to write perl cleanly.