hp 6716s, 6715b, and 6710s laptops on linux wireless problem

The reason you're not seeing the light turn on is because the right driver isn't loading. The hardware expects a signal from the driver telling it to come out of sleep mode; it does this on Windows boots too, if you watch it.

You're looking for the b43 driver. Don't use the bcm43xx driver unless you absolutely have to because it's legacy now. The latest versions of the drivers are usually packaged up in new vanilla kernel releases, but you can get more information at:

http://www.linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43

The wireless card link at the openSUSE WIKI looks a little old, but you could always ask at http://forums.opensuse.org or browse their Wireless Networking section. They've got quite a few openSUSE + Wireless experts over there.