Keep in mind suse and ubuntu are going after vastly different targets. The vast majority of the improvements Novell has been making to its distro are server related..
True, but openSUSE is slightly different in that they do address the desktop, for general use, more than the “Novell” distro. So multi-media, my Canon 20D, all my little toys are plugged into it. Granted, I have to use the kludgey Moto4Lin to talk to my RAZR, but most the other devices plug and play pretty well.