The route I followed on my usual distro (Centos 6) was to install Java, then the Arduino download. There were still a couple of non-functioning parts: errors from the rxtx library about lockfiles and greyed out serial port menu in the Arduino IDE.
These are RedHat/Fedora/Centos permissions issues that can be resolved easily:
* edit /etc/group
* add your username to the uucp, lock and dialout groups
That should fix it by giving your user the required access to the computer's lock directory and serial ports