Mainly, we don't complain because we realize that we're renting a virtual
shared server, and don't expect the same performance of a full server. This is pointed out to you on the
Linode Plan Matrix page. Specifically, look for the
CMR entry - which stands for "
Committed
Megahertz
Rate". As explained in the footnotes, this is the minimum guaranteed processing power you get, and although it does say it's "burstable to 100% of the host's CPU", this scenario is less likely to happen.
Check out one of the websites I host for a friend on my Linode 128:
http://chess.bd0.net/
The front page served is a PHP script, and besides from Apache2 and ProFTPd, this Linode also runs BIND (for secondary DNS), MySQL, Postfix (virtual mail user table is in MySQL), amavis+clam (for virus-scanning incoming mail) and a Perl-based IRC bot on 8 different networks.
I haven't noticed any serious lagging as of yet, and the information services on the bots are responding quite fast (even though one of them needs to collect information from two Shoutcast instances on a different TX-based server).
Additionally, the above page (chess.bd0.net) reaches me in less than 10s, including all graphics, and I'm physically located in Norway.