Since I helped Mandriva to do their packages for Firebird, I jumped and with Michal, we made things happen
Users of Opensuse 10.0,10.1,10.3 and future 11.0 but also SLE 10 can now just use the server:database repository  and get Firebird 2.0.4
As soon as the Firebird Project will publish Firebird 2.1.1, packages will be there too.
Installing different versions of the Firebird in the same Operating System
Here is the translated version of the original article where is described how to run firebird 2.1 and older versions in the same time