I'm mostly concerned with security, as I have been hacked in the past and don't want it to happen again.

I'm thinking of getting a Linode (when available ), putting Gentoo on it, and then just building it up over time, as I get time. I may not get to completely securing it for a while after I get it.

I wonder if the default Linode Gentoo install is secure enough to just sit there? Or do I need to immediately secure it. Does it have any insecure running services? Does it have any security protection? Perhaps it's secure because it has no services at all, or just sshd?

Thanks.

First thing I'd do is setup a firewall and lock the node down. Personally, I like arno's firewall scripts to make it quick and painless.

I've run my node without a firewall for over a year without any security issues whatsoever, although I did do some non-FW hardening, such as turning off all unneeded services, implemented hosts.allow, and using ssh key pairs.

Only recently have I started using IPTables and I also use Arno's FW script. I love it so much that I took the time to email and thank him for such a great tool.

The first thing to do is secure ssh - change the port, use private keys, or set up AllowUsers.