Well i tried it on numerous systems, including mandrake 8.2, gentoo 1.2, debian 3.0. As long as you have rpm installed (you might need to use rpm --nodeps if you are installing on a non rpm systems). Before hand make sure you have all the libaries installed, like open motif or a compatible c shell, and you should be fine, and make sure your X server runs in 24 bits, because in 16 bit mode some tools and rendering, causes a segfault in maya.