Installed Suse 11.2 from download CD. During the "answering questions" at the beginning of the process, selected Gnome as the desktop enviornment instead of the default KDE. The install process ended with no reported errors. After the final reboot at the process's end, the Gnome logon screen was displayed. After the user name/password were entered, a medium green screen was displayed, but the Gnome desktop was never displayed. The "animal" logo was not on the screen just the green screen and some "filagree" lines, probably part of the logo.

Waited a few minutes, mouse-clocked, pressed various keys and then tried ctrl-alt-del, but no response. Did a power off/on reboot, but the results were the same.

I then did a re-install. Took the KDE default for desktop. At install's end, the KDE desktop appeared and everything works just fine. During this second install, all choices were the same as for the first/Gnome install. Worked from written notes, and not from memory, so am sure that the change to KDE was the only difference.

Couldn't find any information on this anomally via forum and Google searches, hence this post.

This is my first time to use Suse, so could well have "missed something". Does anyone have any thoughts on what the cause could be?

I also had problems with Suse 11.2. I abandoned it quickly

Is it a openSuSE CD or DVD ??

you must know that CD comes with either Gnome or KDE. But DVD comes with Gnome,KDE,XFCE & other.
see this official site for more information.

you tried to install Gnome through KDE live CD. am i right ??

It was a DVD I ftp'd from a mirror - don't remember which one.