Last month I upgraded my Red Hat 5.1 box from the pre-installed 5.005 to 5.6.

Everything went smoothly. I did the following:

1. downloaded the perl 5.6 stable.tar.gz file from http://www.perl.com/pub/language/info/software.html#stable
2. ran gunzip stable.tar.gz
3. tar -xvf stable.tar
4. once tar has created a directory for the new Perl, go there and run Makefile.PL
5. make
6. make install

That was literally all I did, and my RH 5.1 box may not be so different from yours. I think the problem may be that you installed the new Perl as an RPM instead of as a tar.gz file.

While I often use RPMs myself to install non-Perl software in this case it is not necessary. Perl is able to install itself quite nicely without the Red Hat Package Manager.

In other words, you don't need Linus to help Larry install Perl. Larry knows how to install Perl on his own, even on Linus's OS.