As it turns out, the dead keyboard was not a Crossover Office issue! SuSE technical support suggested removing the keyword 'desktop' from the kernel parameters passed by grub (or lilo). This slows down the timer interrupt and makes the system behave (I don't claim to know what the underlying problem is).
The display is still strange, though. When the window is minimized, the vertical tool pallet on the left of the window remains on top. If I slide the entire window to the left and place that area offscreen, it completely minimizes and life is good.
It is still necessary to start from Windows Commander. Direct starts from a Linux prompt fail 100% of the time.
I would have to declare this application as functional and useable, with the above caveats.