While KDE is the default with Suse Professional 9.3 (and was last time I used Suse with 9.0).... is it ok to use Gnome instead?

I know it's included (it's listed on the box).... but does Novell/Suse give more weight to KDE? Is this like with RHEL/Fedora - RH gives more weight to Gnome?

Are there any disadvantages to Gnome on Suse vs KDE?

and how do I go about installing it when I first install Suse. I need to wipe my install and try again for something else and while I'm at it I would like to install Gnome instead of KDE during the YAST installation.

You can certainly use Gnome on Suse, but it's not quite as well integrated as KDE is. Since I'm a die-hard Gnome user, I tend to Fedora Core and Ubuntu. Suse is a great distro, but for the best experience, you're kinda stuck with KDE.

Hopefully, now that Suse is open to community development, this will start to change (similar to Ubuntu's KDE-based offshoot, Kubuntu).

that's exactly what I was afraid of.

I'm pretty much a die hard Gnome user and I'm liking Suse... just not KDE.