The binaries of OF 1.5 work qu
 

The binaries of OF 1.5 work quite well in Fedora 8.
Give the binaries a try again and check.

but paraview does not seem to
 

but paraview does not seem to work, it always crashes after choosing a render, with errors like this:

paraFoam -case $FOAM_RUN/tutorials/icoFoam/cavity
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::length_error'
what(): basic_string::_S_create
$HOME/OpenFOAM/OpenFOAM-1.5/bin/paraFoam: line 83: 4257 Aborted paraview --data=$caseFile

or

paraFoam -case $FOAM_RUN/tutorials/icoFoam/cavity
paraview: /home/nero2/henry/OpenFOAM/ThirdParty/ParaView3.3-cvs/VTK/Utilities/vtknetcdf/po sixio.c:1088: ncio_spx_get: Assertion `extent != 0' failed.
$HOME/OpenFOAM/OpenFOAM-1.5/bin/paraFoam: line 83: 4329 Aborted paraview --data=$caseFile