One of the things I remember from Slackware (years ago when it was propped up^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hsupported by WC-CDROM) was that the ways to tweak the kernel were very well documented, far more so than any other aspect of the code.

What are the kernel levels of each build you are using? How many LKM's are installed in the OpenSuSe? Is OpenSuSe set up for 16-bit characters by default?