As much as I like Linux (and, really, I do: I ran Linux 0.99.something on my desktop in college, and wrote my class papers using vim and LaTeX), there are certain things about it that drive me crazy, and the way it reports memory usage is definitely on the list. It should be possible for a reasonably intelligent human being (in which category I place myself) to answer simple questions about system memory usage, such as "How much memory is my database using?" or "How much memory is my web server using?" relatively simply.
