Swizzle feedback is correct. I've tried AOCL with Ubuntu, and the major problem is related with the driver compilation. After being able to compile the aclpci_drv driver, the build script must be changed to look for the proper path of the linux headers, and afterwards the compiled .ko module never loads. Stick with RHEL, the driver compilation and loading is smooth.
The aclpci_drv while not reporting errors if loaded with modprobe is not loaded correctly. You should add a startup script that runs the aclpci_load script each time the system is booted up, for the driver to be correctly loaded. You can try aocl diagnostic to see if both driver and FPGA are up and running.