I actually use OpenSuSE as my main distro of choice, but I get your point. The problem was that once Novell swallowed SuSE there was no one around to really push or advocate SuSE. Novell took the bits they needed and spat out the rest for the "community" do to what they want with. No one at Novell really had any interest in SuSE Hopefully Mark continuously advocating and fighting for Ubuntu and still being closely involved with (and, for that matter, owning) the company will prevent Canonical from cannibalizing it for a quick buck.