So the SuSE 9.0 install completed last night.  Realistically, installing from 
ftp.novell.com over a good cable modem connection took around two hours, 
maybe 2.5 if you add in stuff like partitioning and responding to prompts.

Now for the tweaking.

First off, I notice that the "Windows" keys aren't activated.

I'm having a little trouble with the PCMCIA cards, but I seem to have gotten a 
wired connection with the 3c574 at least.  Not sure exactly what I did, but 
once the card was firmly inserted it worked.

Not so the acx100 wireless.  It's detected and described, but doesn't light 
up.

YaST's software update doesn't work out-of-the-box.  I think the path for the 
only U.S. mirror, sourceforge, is wrong.  I finally got it to work with the 
path ftp://ftp.novell.com/pub/suse/ - had to trim back to just the "suse" 
directory.  We are now 33% patched.

Why can't they patch the distro files directly, so you don't have to download 
everything twice?