I just installed Debian Sarge, and it came with perl 5.8.1 (I'll need to see about .2 soon)
but it did install it in parallel with 5.6.1.
I then ran a CPAN install of additional modules, and all seems to be well
Now my perl -V says:
@INC:
/etc/perl
/usr/local/lib/perl/5.8.1
/usr/local/share/perl/5.8.1
/usr/lib/perl5
/usr/share/perl5
/usr/lib/perl/5.8.1
/usr/share/perl/5.8.1
/usr/local/lib/site_perl
where the perl dirs not marked as 5.8.1 are 5.6.1
hth
j.