Version: (using KDE 4.3.1) Compiler: gcc version 4.4.1. [gcc-4_4-branch revision 150839] (SUSE Linux) OS: Linux Installed from: openSUSE RPMs I've setup a local DNS server and from the console I can successfully ping addresses and do nslookups. I can run windows xp using virtualbox and access any website and have full networking capabilities. However, on the host (my main machine) all kde network apps fail with an unknown host error message. If on the other hand I enter an ip address into the browser (after using the commandline to do an nslookup) I can make a successful connection to the site. I don't know the mechanism that KDE uses for its DNS queries but it seems to have problems with a local DNS. I haven't got GNOME Desktop setup but it would be interesting to see if I have the same problem with GNOME.
This bug was reported to openSUSE by someone else a while ago https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=473308 and there was a work around suggested by adding "nameserver 127.0.0.1" to /etc/resolv.conf which seems to work. So I'm happy to close this since it already known to the opensuse team.