Ok, I have tried this on a couple of distros and I keep getting the same error, Zsnes works fine but only when my gamepad is unpluged which kind of defeats the purpose. I have tried a gravis gamepad pro and a logitech dual action. The error I get is:

Fatal signal: Floating Point Exception (SDL Paracute Deployed)

and then crash! It only flashes on for a split second.

System specs:
Athlon t-bird 1.4
256MB DR Ram
Radeon 9000 64MB
Epox 8KHA Motherboard
Currently running Fedora Core 3
Failed on Mandrake 10.1, Debian Sarge, Gentoo 2004.3, and Fedora core 3

I also cannot play with my Logitech gamepad (USB). I guess it just does not work with Linux nor with ZSNES.

HA! Fixed it! it just needed the lated relese of SDL Problem gone!

the SDL RPM is available on thier site, just serch sdl in google, shold be the first link.

I got the logitech dual action or whatever pad working with Zsnes in Gentoo so it does work. Maybe you dont have support for it compiled into the kernel.