That's not heretical at all - it's a good step. Add cygwin to the mix and soon you'll be having some real fun :-)

And just to re-emphasize demerphq, that would be perltoot, perltootc, perlboot, perlsyn, perldata perlopentut, perlre, and I'd throw in perlreftut and perldsc. All the O'Reilly books are great but you just can't beat the bundled perldocs.

-derby