Well ... i'm not too sure about the isntallation of SuSe because i haven't yet used it but i would recommend Fedora Core 4 for people who are new to Linux, ie me
Its easy with a graphical installer and everything, it should be too hard, you just need a rough knowledge about it which is good Good luck
It sounds to me that it is asking you to enter the size of the swap partition. If you have 512mb of RAM, I would create a 512mb swap partition. You may want to look around for a "auto partition" option in the installer, because I think Novell included such a option for new users. What version of SuSE is this?
SuSE (9.x +) has an auto-partition option. The only reason you might want to go manual is if you have a very small HD. If you want to enter a Megabyte size for swap you'll have to do it +512M for a 512MB swap partition.
Can you post more details on what's going on? and the specs of the computer you're installing on would be helpful as well.