If you have any questions, concerns, or would like to discuss this with anyone at Rackspace - please do not hesitate to reach out directly to me: alex.polvi@rackspace.com
The biggest reason I love linode now is the control panel. Slicehost also had a good control panel, but the Rackspace Cloud CP is severely lacking. It's extremely slow and the DNS is in a really awkward spot (click a server and then click DNS to see a global DNS...it doesn't make sense).
I was a fairly happy Rackspace Cloud customer but Linode is just a great experience. What is Rackspace doing to improve the cloud offering?
That being said, I've raised the issue of the location of the DNS manager many times and have been told that it is by design and won't change. Go to the Linode or Slicehost CP and a link to the DNS manager is on the dashboard, where it should be. I just don't understand the reasoning for hiding it behind a specific server instance despite it being a globally applicable system. This is probably more annoying to me because of the slow speed of the control panel, meaning it takes a long time to get to the DNS manager.
Best of luck with the improvements!