I bought the Suse Linux 9.1 box of CD/DVD's and books from amazon.  If you just
want to install Suse Linux as the only operating system on your computer, then
everything appears to be very simple ... insert the CD's and read about the
installation in the User Guide as you go. 

However, if, like me, you want to make your computer dual bootable, then there
are some complications, which seem to have arisen with the 2.6 kernel (the
kernel of Suse Linux 9.1).  I later realized that I would also need Brian
Ward's book "How Linux Works" (no other book, or source on the internet, seemed
to give me all the information I needed), to help me resolve a "kernel panic".
You'll probably need no more than a short weekend (!) to figure it all out if
the steps below work for you as for me. 

I ended up with my Dell (Optiplex GX260, Pentium 4, 512MB of RAM, 2.4GHz)
computer dual bootable with Windows XP and Suse Linux 9.1 ...  with the linux
(and nothing else) on a Western Digital 80GB USB drive (WDC-WD800BB-00DKA0
external hard drive), and the Windows XP unchanged on the internal hard drive.  

The most time-consuming part, after installation from the CD's, was figuring
out how to get the BIOS to boot to linux (on the external hard drive) from the
boot sector of the internal hard drive (instead of from the installation CD's)
... I kept getting a kernel panic. (Actually, I was getting "Waiting for device
/dev/sda2 to appear: ...  not found --device nodes: console, etc, etc, VFS:
Cannot open root device sda2 or unknown block (0,0) Please append a correct
"root=" boot option Kernel panic: VFS Unable to mount root fs on an unknown
block(0,0)", which was where the booting stopped). I fixed it by recompiling
the kernel. How to recompile the kernel is described in "How Linux Works". 

Start with the installation.
1. See the Suse User and Administration guides, that come in the box of CD's,
about how to install (I'm assuming you've read this for what follows).

2. While installing:
Install grub, but DO NOT INSTALL GRUB ON THE MBR!
Install swap at /dev/sda1
Install root at /dev/sda2
Install the grub boot loader at /dev/sda2
Set mount point of /dev/hda1 to /windows/C
Delete windows completely on /dev/sda
Use reiserfs

Hopefully, you can now boot into linux from the CD. Next, edit menu.lst.
3. Insert the panic=10 option in the file /boot/grub/menu.lst at the 
appropriate place below as follows:
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title Linux
    kernel (hd1,1)/boot/vmlinuz panic=10 root=/dev/sda2 
splash=silent desktop resume=/dev/sda1 showopts
    initrd (hd1,1)/boot/initrd

Using the panic=10 option means that if you get a kernel panic the machine
will reboot after 10 seconds (much better than you switching off and on!).

4. In your home directory (in linux) do
dd if=/boot/grub/stage1 of=bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1
Insert a blank floppy and do
mcopy bootsect.lnx a:

Next, boot into Windows XP.
5. Copy bootsect.lnx from the floppy to the C: drive. Look for the file called
boot.ini in the C: drive (the highest level directory in C:). It may be a 
hidden file until you make it visible, but it's there alright. Then remove the
read-only check mark. In the C: drive in Windows XP use notepad to append the 
following extra line within the boot.ini file 
C:\bootsect.lnx="Suse Linux 9.1". 
Now reboot, and you should see two options. Check that booting to Windows XP is
ok by selecting Windows. Reboot, and then select Suse Linux 9.1.

Somewhere in this reboot is where you may get the kernel panic. I read on the
internet that some people (depending on their computers), don't get a panic.
But I did, and I'm assuming you did also. So, reboot into linux from the
installation CD's and plan to figure out how to recompile the kernel. 
6. Read Chapter 10 of Brian Ward's "How Linux Works" about recompiling the
kernel, and Chapter 10 of the Suse Administration Guide. Not all the drivers
for SCSI drives are installed by default, so you'll be looking to add these.
When you've recompiled as Brian Ward describes, reboot. All I can tell you is
... it booted for me like a dream and I've never looked back. 

7. If you have a gigantic cursor and enormous letters, as I did, this is 
fixed by changing the screen resolution using Yast. Yast is also the tool to
use to install extra software, set the ip address, set security options, etc. 

8. Finally, I found the Suse web browser konquerer to be not nearly as user-
friendly as firefox (which I installed from the web).