I also signed up with both so as to test them and see which I liked more. Both were awesome (the two best on the market, in my opinion), but Linode won my vote in the end because of its memory/dollar and slightly better performance numbers.

Note: Performance numbers were mostly based on things I read -- I didn't personally conduct any comprehensive tests, though I did notice that my pages loaded faster and the amount of memory used per page was lower with Linode. For example, here is the memory usage information for just my homepage:

On slicehost server:
Memory used at: devel_init()=3.99 MB, devel_shutdown()=43.08 MB.

On linode server:
Memory used at: devel_init()=2.42 MB, devel_shutdown()=26 MB.

Perhaps a couple of my settings were different on the 2 servers, but I'm pretty sure there were no substantial differences. (Also, as far as the actual content being loaded on the homepage, one server's contents were an exact copy of the other server's).

Hi Chris

Given the same configuration of Drupal, and perhaps very similar setup of the server software and operating system, I assume it's only that you're on a 64-bit system at Slicehost and a 32-bit here at Linode.

Yeah I'm thinking that was a big part of it.

Slicehost does not yet support using user-supplied kernels. When I learned that linode supports it via pv_grub, I switched immediatly.

FWIW, it is possible to run a 32 bit chroot in slicehost, and with some care, the 64 bit system can be removed, converting the system to 32 bit userland.

This is a very big deal to me, as a current Slicehost customer: I really want working SELinux support, but since the guys over at Slice aren't familiar with it, getting it working with their out-of-the-box kernels has been difficult. (To their credit, they were great about adding kernel command-line parameters that I requested while I was testing, but the process would have been dramatically faster if I'd have been able to drive it on my own schedule; at the end of the day, I wasn't able to get it working because of a few pre-boot needs from initrd.)

You've given me something to think very hard about.


That's what I've suggested to several people over there; 256MB of RAM actually becomes pretty livable for small/hobby apps once you move to a 32-bit userland. At least on Fedora or CentOS, it's a pretty painless switch if you have relatively decent familiarity with RPM.

_________________
-Ed
Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.

I'm in the process of moving all my projects/clients over to Linode from Slicehost.

I signed up with Slicehost back when it was "invite only" and you had to wait for a space to become available.

Back then their motto was "for developers by developers" - now its "we're gunning for the big fish".

They have great support - but in 2+ years and several slices I've needed that "great" support exactly 2 times.

What they don't have it great prices, or even good prices. They have PREMIUM prices for a item that's continually moving towards the commodity market.

Worse, they don't have a clue. EVERY complaint gets answered with a "yes, but we have great support". One of the principals even answered "we will NOT compete on price", but they also don't compete on performance or features or bandwidth.

It's my understanding many (many) Slicer's are moving out, and apparently Slicehost does not care (at least they make ZERO effort to stop the exodus). My guess, if you don't want/need 20 2048 slices today, and won't grow to 40 4096 slices by year end, they don't care if you come or go.

So here I am - I hope Linode is just a tad more interested in my business. It's not big, but it IS important to me, so I need it to be just a tad important to Linode (or they need to at least pretend it is).

So far (a month and a bit) so good.

Same here. I was on a 256 slice for a year. Closed my Slicehost account 15 days ago and moved to a linode 360 and I'm already loving it!