I tried to install OO 633 and 638 on my SuSE 7.2 system (kernel 2.4.4, XFree86
4.1.0), the $LANG environment variable set to "de_DE.UTF-8".
When trying to install 633, the setup programm silently died after just
displaying "glibc version 2.2.2", even before any windows or splash screens
appeared.
Then I tried to install 638, the setup program started well, I could select the
installation type and the destination directory, but then, when I had to press
"Install" and the copying of files should begin, the installer always crashed.
I didn't really know what do to and was in desperation for some days - but then
I had the idea that it could be an issue with the system locale. I set $LANG to
"en_US" (no UTF8) - et voila, the setup program run without problems.

Now I have successfully installed OO 638, but alway before starting it I have to
set $LANG from my system default "de_DE.UTF-8" to "en_US", then OpenOffice runs
without problems (only all non-ascii characters in document titles are not
correctly displayed in the window title bar, I guess it is because of X or
whatever is responsible for displaying the window title expects UTF-8 input?)
When I try to run OpenOffice with my default locale "de_DE.UTF-8", it starts up
and I can even type text in the new document, but it crashes after most actions
I want to do (it crashes when opening documents, changing font settings, ...)