Hi extendedping,

The Perl version on Maemo, while a little old, is a fully functional and flexible Perl installation. I've written a bit about the Perl environment on Maemo here: http://wiki.maemo.org/Perl (Mostly technical stuff like packages available, etc.)

You can learn a great deal about Perl just using the installation out of the box on Maemo. A lot of the inner workings of Maemo are based on Perl because Maemo is based on Debian and Debian is essentially C libraries held together with Perl glue. :-) I'm taking liberties of course, but there is lots and lots of working perl code that is a fundamental part of Maemo.

Should you need a specific library you can fairly easily take a Debian package and compile it on your N900, or even submit the package with modifications to Maemo itself. Perl packages are generally quite portable.

Following the Llama book should be easy and fun on the N900!