Hi,
I had been struggling with NetBlend on SUSE Linux for a while today. Turns out the problem was due to two different versions of Python on my computer.
- Blender 2.42a distributed binary uses Python 2.3 internally
- Python 2.4 is installed externally under SUSE Linux NetBlend invokes a Python script. However, because of the Python version conflict (2.3 vs 2.4), the script failed.
The only solution I could see was to compile Blender so that it uses Python 2.4.
Several hours later, I managed to get Blender recompiled and installed to use Python 2.4. Blender runs faster and NetBlend now allows me to use my Linux machine as part of the render farm. For those of you who want to recompile Blender (to get the speed) on SUSE Linux, I have added to the Blender Wiki, here:
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/PartI/Compiling_the_sources
Hopefully I’ll make up those hours in the amount of faster renders I can now perform. 
T