After much testing and adjusting settings with Skype and alsamixer I finally got my microphone working with skype.

One of the settings I need in alsamixer is "Input source" set to "Rear mic" (none of the settings in KDE's "System settings->multimedia->Phono" manage to achieve this - even if I choose "Show advanced devices" none set as the prefered get Skype to pick up the mic. The only "/dev" file open in Skype is "/dev/shm/pulse-shm-917859224"). The trouble is that every time I do a reboot it gets set back to "Front mic". Is there some way I can make it survive a reboot?

I am running openSUSE 11.4 on a Dell XPS studio.

You likely need to configure Pulseaudio in this case. This can be done from within KMix and the Phonon control module if you have a Pulseaudio enabled version (it will have Playback and Capture streams tabs in KMix if this is the case). It can also be done using pavucontrol.

My KMix does have Playback and Capture streams tabs but does not have any selectors for choosing input source on microphones.

I then installed and ran pavucontrol. I was able to set the input source with it. This time the setting did survive a reboot.

Thanks, David.

Yup, this is expected. You can set the microphone used using the Phonon KCM if you are using Pulseaudio, and that will work also (they both change the same settings)