Yes, default Fedora install with "yum" gave me 151 connections on both Linodes, not sure if that's specific to Fedora or not.
If I make max_connections real low (20 like obs said) and I end up with some extra ram, where would I get he most bang for my buck with my.cnf?
Now the top recommendations I get for both Linodes from mysqltuner:
sort_buffer_size (> 4M)
read_rnd_buffer_size (> 2M)
Reading a few posts in Google, some people say sort_buffer_size should be left default, I think it was at 512k. Sounds like every megabyte you add to sort_buffer_size gets multiplied times max_connections, it adds up fast.
Anyway, that advice definitely made a difference, I feel much better about it now--no warning message through mysqltuner.
Maybe I'll post the entire mysqltuner report(s) here in a new thread after the traffic doubles and gets slow again

I'm sure you're dying in anticipation.