> I'm a brand new user to Linux (escaped from Big Brother Bill), and there
> are a few pretty minor things I have been having trouble with.
> 
> The first is that every time I start my computer, the keyboard setting
> comes up in German. I can't count how many times I've tried to fix this.
> I change it easy enough once I log in to KDE, but it never stays from
> session to session.

look for kbdconfig to reconfigure the keyboard (at least I have that on RH7.2).

> The second is that my binary files won't execute. I've been trying to
> download Java Runtime Environment 1.3.1 and a java based P2P application
> called Limewire. Both are binaries, but they never execute.

chmod 755 <filename>
gives permissions of rwxr-xr-x

./<filename>

> I'm using SuSE Personal 7.3.