openSUSE 11.0 on the MacBook

Just starting to get openSUSE 11.0 setup on the Mac.
Actually, I find that, particularly with openSUSE, I start clicking around and installing all sorts of unnecessary crap just to get something working -- when I may regret some of the stuff I installed later.
This is particularly the case with getting media players working particularly the codecs.
For the future, I would strongly recommend just installing the repos shown in this guide (although there are quite a lot).
To get the right codecs, I believe I can avoid a lot of needless flailing around just with this command:

sudo zypper in libdvdcss libxine1 w32codec-all k3b-codecs

Nevertheless, even after the correct installs, I couldn't get Amarok to play without a reboot. (I really don't know how many times a reboot in Linux has miraculously resurrected a dying computer)
Things that are working fine in this new install are:
AWN
Fusion-icon (need to symlink to ~/.kde4/Autostart)
Yakuake
Opera 9.52
Gmail Notifier (symlinked to ~/.kde4/Autostart)

Media players working are Amarok (1.4) and Banshee1
However, I was unable to compile Amarok 2 beta. Also, I posted to openSUSE forums about how to install Amarok 2 (which works fine in KuruminNG) but have no replies up to now which is ominous.

On the question of sound, I came across this excellent thread on sound problem troubleshooting in openSUSE (actually, it's a tutorial). Worth keeping in mind, should I have problems in the future.

Sound problem Ubuntu Hardy (Mac)

This is very strange but today sound didn't work in Hardy on the MacBook despite having worked perfectly yesterday.
Luckily the fix was no more than what I had done here using the solution I found in this thread.
OK, great that it worked fine after this but what happened that I lost the sound? For the moment I have not the vaguest idea what went wrong.

Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (Alpha3)

Despite yesterday's problems and scares, I eventually got Intrepid Ibex working on my MacBook. For an Alpha it works pretty well although there are a few problems. Most notable is the fact that the boot sometimes doesn't lead to a visible screen -- no, just black but with sound. A reboot has always brought back the screen for me (I should check the logs to see what went wrong here).
Practically everything from my Hardy /home works fine -- no problems.
Another(relatively minor) difficulty is that the ShutDown icon I added to the Gnome panel actually is really a LogOut icon and brings you to the LogIn screen. However, here you can Reboot from the Options.
Can't say that I've noticed any major differences from Hardy other than the chocolate brown theme in the windows. So, far everything works well and even got wireless working first time (used this guide).

The only serious problem I had in this alpha3 version of II, was that there was no sound. So I googled around and found this solution here.
This simply involved this cli steps
sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
and then add
blacklist snd_pcsp
to the bottom of the existing list.
Worked like a charm

Sound in Foresight on Dell

For a long time, I have not been able to play music on Foresight (Dell) apparently because the sound card (Creative SoundBlaster emu10k1x) wasn't recognised.
Then I came across this which explained how to manually install the snd-emu1k1x module. The alsa files needed for this compile and install you can get from here.
I got an error with this command

chmod a+rw /dev/dsp /dev/mixer /dev/sequencer /dev/midi

I think because I don't have midi or sequencer stuff. Similarly, this command

modprobe snd-emu10k1x ; modprobe snd-pcm-oss ; modprobe snd-mixer-oss ; modprobe snd-seq-oss

gave a FATAL error for the snd-seq-oss part.
Nevertheless, after a reboot, my card now showed up in "Open Volume Control">File whereas before only Camera was available.
Now, I can play music in Banshee, without any problem.
It seems this may have arisen because of various kernel upgrades which, for some reason, did not include the emu10k1x module.