My desktop has no touchpad, yet Suse apparently looks for one each time I boot the machine. At the end of the boot cycle, I am left with an error message reporting that it couldn’t find a touchpad. Is there some way to stop it from looking for a touchpad?
You need to give your opensuse version number, and the desktop you are using.
I am going to guess that you are using KDE, and answer for that.
With recent KDE, the touchpad applet is started by your own saved configuration. You possibly migrated your home directory from a different computer that did have a touchpad.
If this is “synaptiks”, then:
1: Find the icon. It should be in the system tray. It is probably hidden, so you will have to show the hidden icons.
2: Click on it and select “settings”. If there is a box checked telling it to always start, then uncheck that box.
3: There should be an exit option, to tell synaptiks to exit.
4: If you have your desktop startup from a saved session, then you need to resave the session after closing synaptiks. If you have your session start with how you left off on the previous session, then just closing synaptiks should be sufficient.
If my guess about desktop is wrong, then provide the information needed.
And it would of course be very nice if you explicitly confirm or deny @nrickert’s guess about your openSUSE level and desktop. That would benefit averybodu who tries to red this thread.