Okay. I've talked to some people and some things have been explained to me. I now understand the origin of the linker error.
First, let me clarify something: it was incorrect or imprecise to refer to "gcc libunwind" in the top post. I think it is probably clearest to refer to this library (Debian "libunwind-dev", with no numbers) as "Savannah libunwind". According to @whitequark, this *is* "HP Libunwind" (through some former open source release, I guess?)