As the Second Life website warns, this client connects to the main grid, so be careful--there are definitely still bugs in the system, and any changes you make to the world are permanent.

Initial testing proved favourable; it installs and runs perfectly on Fedora Core 3 boxes with NVidia binary graphics drivers. Although several features in the game client are missing or working poorly, they are known issues at this alpha stage, and the forums allow for discussion and feedback.