Adding an option to the SUSE 8.2 Boot Menu
 

I would like to add an option to the SUSE 8.2 Boot Menu that would just boot linux to a command line, and not load the gui. Is this possible? (or am I missing something obvious!?)

I do not think that the bootloader can make the decision as to what runlevel you boot into. That decision is made based on the contents of /etc/inittab.

In /etc/inittab you will find a line that says:
id:5:initdefault
which means to boot into a GUI
If you change that line to:
id:3:initdefault
then you will boot into a command line.

Now I have never tried this but theoretically if you set that line to
id::initdefault
then boot should stop and ask you what runlevel do you want. For GUI reply 5, for command line reply 3.

The other possibility is to take the id:5:initdefault line entirely out of /etc/inittab and again boot should stop and ask you for a runlevel number.

You could be the guinea penguin and see if this theory really works. You will need a rescue CD or floppy to set /etc/inittab back to 5 if boot fails due to a bad parameter in /etc/inittab.

A saner method is to set the default run level to 3 and if you want a GUI then startx.