Comment 45 for bug 574910

Al, John:

Thanks for the information. I understand that people are trying to be helpful by posting the links on how load average is calculated. Using this information is like trying to back calculate interest, principal and term based on the last payment in an amortization schedule. If the *top and friends don't give any indication on where the trouble is coming from then load average is just a number and trying to fathom where the trouble is coming from based on how that is calculated would be like trying to read tea leaves to do brain surgery. Only someone with far more intimate knowledge of the kernel could accomplish that kind of "magic". A skill I do not have.

Posting the links to how Linux calculates load average gave me the impression that there was some doubt as to the veracity of the information I (and others) had posted.

I like Ubuntu but I think that this issue has tarnished the image it has spent a lot of time cultivating. IMHO (and I guess many others) 10.04 was not ready for prime time. I had this image in my head that the LTS releases were more predictable than the non LTS releases particularly since they are "supported" so if you moved from one LTS to another and find it is not as stable or has a huge problems compared to the last non LTS release it is a W T F moment and very upsetting. This is more true if you have spent a lot of time doing "clean" installs and/or application migrations to the new release only to find a huge flaw in it when you try to use it.