Yup, I've got to third that one. In both large and small distros, Firefox installs and uninstalls painlessly. I'd suggest that if you manage to uninstall Firefox and you still want to use Suse, try installing it manually from a website. Then you shouldn't have as many of these interdependency problems. There ARE other things in Linux that have horrible interdependency issues... mostly the ones that are considered to be KDE programs... but Firefox normally is not one of them. And open office usually isn't either.

Just my 2 cents-it's not suse...I'm running Suse 9.3 (and 9.2 before that) with kde, and i've uninstalled/reinstalled/etc both firefox and openoffice (independently of each other) a couple of times without any bit of complaint from yast(suse's package manager) or rpm.

The problem has gone away as quickly as it arrived, and with as little assistance from me. I have done nothing that I have not described in my previous messages.

What happened was that SUSE gave me a notice of system updates, and I installed them. There were three of them, two new games and a kernel update. Next time I opened Firefox (which I did only to ponder the predicament), all was well. The FF GUI was displaying the theme that I had tried to get it to use (not the jar file I had downloaded, but one of the three that came with the browser), downloading works, all's right with the world.

This is not simply a result of reloading Firefox; the problems had survived several reloadings and even more than one system shutdown. I do not see an alternative to the conclusion that the new kernel fixed it. I am prepared to believe that the dependency of Open Office upon Firefox was a figment of a delirious kernel; it never made any sense, and I had to believe what the system was telling me.

Besides the satisfaction of having again a working system, I am gratified that the way the problem solved itself seems to confirm what I have been saying -- I didn't cause the problem.

My thanks to all of you for your efforts at helping me. Even though nothing we did helped, the fact that I had others considering the problem with me and proposing solutions was much better for my morale than being alone with it as an ignorant newbie that can't find his way yet around even a properly functioning system. And I have learned much by trying to understand the problem as I was able to see it.