Re: So....
"Last week's Linux Weekly News (LWN) included a discussion flowing from someone suggesting OpenSuSE has little following, and the support for it was interesting."
CPQ/HP, Dell, and IBM all have some kind of relationship with Suse so it's a supported option on (some of) their hardware (business-class desktop+laptop, plus servers). Maybe a touch commercial for some old-skool Linux folk? For similar reasons, Novell's dalliance with MS a few years ago may have done them no favours.
But for a simple reliable general purpose Linux that generally Just Works (tm), it's hard to beat Suse. I've tried a few, and they may well have some specific advantages over Suse especially if Suse have just released one of the occasional below-par versions, but ever since my first involvement with Suse 8, nothing really fits the bill like Suse does.