Zaine, I am telling you what I've experienced on my BASE INSTALL of opensuse from the Live CD image. After the initial 280 patch update, The number I gave you is what I was prompted to install over the past 7 days.
How about we stop accusing people of exaggerating and realize that everyone's experience may vary? I am very sick of people attacking me when I share my experience (typical in the *nix community). I am not trying to make Linux look bad, I have no reason to do so. I am not a fanboy of ANY platform or product. I run whatever works and am not afraid to point out shortcomings. I am merely stating what I am experiencing or have experienced.
To sum it up, from memory, I had 8 on Tuesday and 7 on Thursday with default repositories. Cannot recall the other days, but that is what I experienced with various 2-3 patch days in between.
On Windows, I had SP1 for Win7 and 5 security updates (for a month).
Does this mean it is bad for either platform? No, update your software. Please, keep me secure. But let's drop the age-old metaphor that Windows has more patches than a Linux system. Call it like it is.