Correct me if I am wrong: It seems that OpenSuse 13.2 came out in November of 2014, meaning it’s just over two years old at this point. Why would it be EOLed after such a short time? I am puzzled.
My understanding is that NVIDIA tests particular Linux distros with their corresponding default gcc, glibc, and kernel versions, and these component versions are stated in the Installation Guide.
If you choose different components to go along with a given supported distro, you are on your own. From past reports in these forums, cobbling together components and removing the safety checks from the CUDA header files sometimes works, or it can result in all kind of cryptic errors.
From a practical perspective, I don’t see any realistic alternative to NVIDIA’s validation process. They are not in the business of figuring out what Linux components may or may not work together harmoniously, instead they rely on the distro configurators to figure that out, then just test against a specific distro.
Which distros are supported by CUDA is presumably driven purely by customer demand, so maybe OpenSuse is no longer as popular as it used to be among people using CUDA on Linux? Presumably NVIDIA can gauge demand easily by counting the number of downloads for a given distro’s package.
IMHO, some consolidation in the Linux space wouldn’t hurt.