Well, the wiki puts it quite well:

In addition, a variety of tools have been put in place to make it easy for the community to manage new feature requests. A search engine is available for supported browsers; a dashboard provides ready access to both popular and new feature requests; mailing lists, RSS feeds, and integration with Hermes (I'll explain that in part 6).

The feature that most clearly distinguishes openFATE is also the obvious one: this is not for bugs! Bugs continue to be handled through Bugzilla, which does an excellent job. By distinguishing feature requests from bugs, contributers can more easily focus on the task at hand; the bug handling teams are relieved of the the load generated by feature requests, and true 'bugs', such as security issues, are prioritized over the addition of new features.

openSUSE is a free, open project. Although Novell sponsors it heavily, the project belongs to the openSUSE community. Things were not always this way; before Novell's acquisition of SuSE, SuSE internally managed the course of the distribution, with little input or participation from the user community. Novell's decision to split the SUSE product line into the free, open, community managed openSUSE project, and the Novell-owned SUSE Linux Enterprise projects, has allowed the community to embrace, extend, and direct SUSE in a way that was not possible before.

The openSUSE project is governed by a document of Guiding Principles, managed by a Board of Directors, elected by the Membership, who are appointed from the User community. I'll explain each group in a bit more detail.

Users can apply based on the merits of any contribution, but it is a request not a grant. Applications are reviewed individually (currently by the Board) and granted on a case-by-case basis. Given, most applicants are accepted, assuming they understand what they are applying for. Applying without contribution, over-embellishing, or flat out lying about your contribution is a sure-fire way to get yourself drummed out.

Members do receive some interesting benefits, most of which are only of interest to those who would want to contribute anyway: an @opensuse.org email alias, an openSUSE cloak on Freenode's IRC servers, syndication on Planet SUSE, a Lizards blog account, and most importantly, access to Board elections.

Membership requires contribution, because Members must be committed to the project. From the Members the Board is selected and elected, who make the day-to-day decisions about the direction of our distribution. It is a serious responsibility, and an important role in the community. As of today, there are nearly 400 openSUSE Members.

During an annual election, Members may run for a position on the Board, half of which is elected each year to server a two-year term. The Board consists always of both Novell employees, and non-employee Members. Only the chair is directly appointed by Novell. The Board provides guidance, and facilitates communication with Novell; they are the official channel between the community and the corporation, responsible for ensuring the success of the project.

If you use openSUSE, I encourage you to sign onto users.opensuse.org, and (if you agree) register your support for the Guiding Principles. Each user that does so strengthens our community, and therefore ensures the endurance of our project. If you are giving back to the community, apply for Membership, so your contribution can be recognized, and the horizons for your participation expanded. Who knows... maybe you'll be on the Board next year ;)

Despite the decision to default to KDE, the Gnome desktop continues to be well supported, well integrated, and well polished. Jakub 'jimmac' Steiner brought out a clean, dark, green Sonar theme, used as the new default from grub's boot messages through to Gnome's desktop. Although Ubuntu 9.10 also shipped with some dark themes, Sonar differentiates itself by maintaining a light document area that more cleanly incorporates non-native applications, such as Qt/KDE apps, Java apps, and OpenOffice.org. Title bars and some configuration headers are adorned with jimmac's Fifth Leg font, which is a free font inspired by the font used for SUSE logos.

In addition to improvements to the desktop environments themselves, both KDE and Gnome include mature social networking applications. Choqok and Gwibber are microblogging apps (Twitter, Identica, Facebook, etc.) for KDE and Gnome, respectively. Both Pidgin and Kopete instant messenger clients include Facebook chat plugins. KDE's Plasma desktop includes plugins and widgets for integrating with microblogs and openDesktop.

Deeper down the stack, 11.2 includes some exciting new technologies. The desktop kernel is installed by default with the graphical desktops (the default kernel is preferred for server applications). Ext4 is now the default file system, but the upcoming btrfs is included as well. Also on the file system front, complete hard drives can now be encrypted during installation. Zypper & libzypp, the universal package management library, are faster than ever, more feature complete, and dependency resolution has been completely reworked with an algorithm called Sat Solver.

The community addon repositories have been refined, and include some intelligent scripting to ease use. Repositories are available for the current versions of all major desktops, or backports up Gnome and KDE applications to the currently shipped desktops. Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, Mono, VirtualBox, VLC, and Wine repositories are available, providing current releases and betas of their applications. Some development repositories are available as well, for revisions on Databases and PHP. If you are looking for a broader application library, both the Contrib and Packman repositories are available for subscription. Most helpful, in my opinion, is the Nvidia repository: subscribing to the repository automatically selects the appropriate driver for your Nvidia hardware, and the matching kernel module for your system. Updates to the kernel will be cooperatively updated through dependencies, ensuring that your kernel and proprietary driver stay in sync without ever having to build it. Access to these repositories is through YaST => Software Repositories => Add => Community Repositories.

A wide variety of options are available for both downloading and using openSUSE 11.2. New to the lineup are 'hybrid' live ISO images, which can be burned to CD for a typical live boot, or copied to a usb drive with the remaining space used for persistent storage. The live images are available for both Gnome and KDE desktops, as well as the full DVD install image, and a small network install image, all in both 32-bit and 64-bit x86 (PowerPC images are no longer provided) Additional CD images are available for extra language support, and non-free software. Downloads are available directly via FTP from a preferred mirror, by BitTorrent, Metalink, or you may select a specific mirror if you choose.

openSUSE Ambassadors, including myself, can provide the awesome 11.2 community DVD. This dual-layered double-sided disc is 32-bit on one side, 64-bit on the reverse, and will boot to Live Gnome, Live KDE, the DVD installer, or a set of utilities. Contact me if you'd like one!