I have not used Tumbleweed before but I have a problem that makes me curious about it. I have an old T-23 Think Pad that still works great and runs 12.2 very well. I tried the LIVE DISK for 12.3 RC1 and was totally unable to get it to set up either a live desktop or to do an install. It seems that the video driver for the Savage Super 9 SIS video card has been dropped from the newer kernels with 12.3. (T-23 1.2 GHZ PIII, 1 GB RAM, Savage Super 9 video with 16 MB video RAM, 160 GB HD)
Given that Tumbleweed moves forward with packages as it updates would it keep a working video driver or remove it and break the video by deleting the x-11 driver for the Savage chip set? My current install is working very well but the support for 12.2 will end at some point in the not distant future so I am curious about Tumbleweed.
I can’t find any evidence that the “Savage Super 9 SIS” support has been removed from kernel 3.7, to be included in openSUSE 12.3. However, with the openSUSE 12.3 RC1 DVD, I was unable to boot in grub2-efi mode with a nVIDIA GT 660 Ti (no readable screen) and with an nVIDIA 9500, I could only get it to install using the text mode. Any problems you experience may be due to the RC1 status of openSUSE 12.3 and not actually being cut out by kernel 3.7, but you could produce more proof to support your claim. I am feeling that video card problems are directly a problem in openSUSE 12.3 RC1 only and not the included kernel, though its kernel configuration could be at fault. In any event, you should raise a bug report about the SIS support problem before it is too late.
I have looked at the kernel configuration for openSUSE 12.3 and the same SiS config settings for openSUSE 12.2 exist in openSUSE 12.3 RC1, so the kernel modules are included or will be installed upon detection. The package xf86-video-sis is present in openSUSE 12.2 and 12.3. So, I assume any issue with openSUSE 12.3 RC1 is a bug and should be reported (https://bugzilla.novell.com/index.cgi). I was unable to determine the exact chipset that Super 8 refers to. More info on SiS can be found here:
Ok, I just booted from the 64bit RC1 liveCD to check for xf86-video-sis, and it is definitely installed (i.e. without detection). With old hardware, I guess the OP used 32bit, but I don’t have that. A bug report does seems to be the only way forward.