My bad, didn't see that you're a fellow Linux user; I would have suggested using QJoyPad which is what I use for a few emulators that don't have native joystick support. But you mentioned that even accessing the GCPad or Wiimote config screens causes this error, so that's not really going to help you, unfortunately.
For 3.0, you need to checkout the hash (35d1599724a4c41d0c93e4cbf05ba109feaa969c) from the git repository, then compile that code. Since you're using a 64-bit OS, I actually happen to already have a binary compiled. Check it out here. The repos you're downloading from might be doing something that you're not, or perhaps they're even incorporating specific workarounds for OpenSUSE.
For 3.0, you need to checkout the hash (35d1599724a4c41d0c93e4cbf05ba109feaa969c) from the git repository, then compile that code. Since you're using a 64-bit OS, I actually happen to already have a binary compiled. Check it out here. The repos you're downloading from might be doing something that you're not, or perhaps they're even incorporating specific workarounds for OpenSUSE.