i've never used it, but i have the feeling it's very distro-neutral, and AFAIK it's just a simple program, it's not a kernel module or anything like that, don't worry...
you should take a look at the README, though:
http://checkinstall.izto.org/docs/README
the one i've used is
installwatch, which basically does just that - it watches the files that "make install" installs and gives you the list of stuff... checkinstall is based on installwatch... but checkinstall seems to have many more options, for example, the package creation stuff...
here's the link to installwatch:
http://asic-linux.com.mx/~izto/check...tallwatch.html
you might not need all the stuff checkinstall offers, you might be happy with installwatch...