See what happened in KDE4 is that the desktop is now controlled by something called “Plasma”. Everything that is on the desktop and panels is a “Plasma applet”. In KDE 4.0 plasma was not really finished so unfortunately there are quite a few missing features. In KDE 4.1 this has been fixed but I’m afraid for KDE 4.0 (and hence openSUSE 11.0) you’re stuck with these half-solutions.
quickshade’s solutions are correct. To explain a bit further:
#2: As I said only Plasma applets are allowed on the desktop in KDE4. To add an application icon to your desktop, you have to actually add a plasma applet that holds that icon. This plasma applet is called “Icon”. Add one of those and configure (right click and select configure icon) to get it to point at your application.
#3: He means copy the .desktop files to your /home/user/Desktop/ folder. A .desktop file in this case is basically a linux “shortcut” file. If you open up your /home/user/Desktop folder in Konqueror/Dolphin, you should be able to right click and create a new “Link to Application”. This should allow you to create a desktop file pointing wherever you want it to. This will then appear on your desktop because it is in your ~/Desktop folder. Note that this will not work in KDE 4.1!