I am new to linux.
I have a Gateway computer (desktop) that is about 10 years old. 400 Mhz Celeron processor, 192mb RAM, 9 GB HD. Will Suse 10.2 work on this? If not, what would be the most appropriate distro to use?

System requirements

SUSE LINUX supports most PC hardware components. The following requirements should be met to ensure smooth operation of Open SUSE LINUX 10.3 on a 32 bit platform. Please see http://www.opensuse.org for full details:
Processor: Intel: Pentium 1-4; AMD: Duron, Athlon, Athlon XP, Athlon MP and Sempron
Main memory: At least 128 MB; 256 MB recommended
Hard disk: At least 500 MB (for minimal system); 2.5 GB recommended for standard system
Sound and graphics cards: Supports most modern sound and graphics cards

I have SuSE 10.2 set up on a laptop with a vaguely similar spec (366 Mhz P3, 168 MB ram).

By and large its adequate (you weren't expecting exciting, were you?) even using kde, although you do need a little patience at times, and you would want to avoid being too optimistic in keeping loads of applications open at once.

There is a strong case for using something like XFCE in low memory situations like this (but you can see that, even though there is a strong case, I have stuck with kde), and anyway switching to XFCE for memory 'slimness' is probably useless if you are going to start running lots of k* apps.

And something like open office is going to take a time to start up, so you might want to consider whether you want to use that at all. (10.3 is faster in some respects and has a more recent version of OO which is faster too, but may have a bigger memory footprint) Yast is slow too, but then it's always a bit slow, even on fast hardware.

All in all, SuSE is workable in this kind of situation with a bit of care and patience, depending on your requirements, but one of the slimmed down distros might be a better choice, if you can put up with a restricted set of applications.

Yes, you should try a smaller distro (eg. Zenwalk)