Yes, that works great on my Mint laptop and, I guess, the majority of modern distros.
But let's try your advice on CentOS 5 (and please don't ask me why some people still use it -- I have no idea, too):

$ uname -a
Linux ip-10-182-148-229 2.6.18-274.7.1.el5xen #1 SMP Thu Oct 20 17:06:34 EDT 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

$ wget http://downloads.dlang.org/releases/2014/dmd.2.065.0.zip -q
$ unzip -q dmd.2.065.0.zip

$ cat test.d
import std.stdio; void main() { writeln("Hello, old Linux system!"); }
$ ./dmd2/linux/bin64/dmd -L-L/usr/lib64 test.d
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -l:libphobos2.a
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
--- errorlevel 1

O-ops!..