I'm thinking of getting "a Linode". What are user's experiences? All positive? What about the network? Any downtime?

I'd have to say I'm pretty impressed.

Pros:
- All bugs can be fixed, there will never be something inherently wrong with linux UML hosting (meaning its *not* flawed by design)
- Linode does a damn fine job of rolling one sweet product out
- Linode supports a wide variety of distributions (BIG YAY !)
- The price is definitely right, and so are the features
- Their tech support is pretty good at fixing things fast
- You virtual linux machine can always use up CPU cycles if no one else on the real machine is using them (read next)

Cons:
- Sometimes my UML seems really really slow (even typing on bash becomes ridiculously laggy), I assume this has to do with others on the machine using up the extra CPU cycles. (this is both a pro, and a con, heh)
- If a distribution has a setting you dislike, there may not be too much you can do with it (You'll only notice this if you like communist control over your distro like me, heh)

In the end, I sure am a satisfied customer, and I like this service 100%.

Sunny Dubey

My experience thus far has been very positive. I've had a Linode for almost 1 month and have been "live" on it (having moved my site onto it and changed my DNS records so that my Linode hosts my site) for less than a week.

There have been no major network outages and no system reboots. I do occasionally lose connectivity to my Linode for about a minute at a time a couple of times a day, but I think that might be on my local end, not at my Linode. Performace of my Linode has been great, it is very fast most of the time, occasionally slowing down a bit as other Linodes on the host system compete for CPU and disk, and rarely becoming quite slow due to serious CPU/disk contention with other Linodes.

I have pared my small RedHat installation down to 163 packages, and have lots of free space left over. I'm using an rsync script that I wrote to back my system up nightly.

Everything is humming along very nicely. My only concerns are with the current lack of personnel redundancy at Linode.com (there is one person working there now, and if anything happens to him, then all the Linodes are pretty much screwed), but I'm sure that will be rectified soon.

I've been running a BitTorrent tracker (with occasional high-bandwidth seeds) on my Linode since the end of June. The only reboot was deliberate on my part (when the disk allocation was doubled - thanks!), and the service has been very reliable.

I'm running the Debian distro, with hand-compiled packages for python and wxPython (for the BitTorrent stuff), and a hand-compiled PostgreSQL database backend.

http://fubegra.no-ip.org/ if you're interested.[/url]

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Bus error (passengers dumped)

I'm a newbie who has had my linode for a couple of days now. I like it so far

Wonderful experience so far. Only place (I know of) where I can host on the same distro that I started with long ago: Slackware.

Over 33 days uptime on my linode. Yet to find any problems. Plus the management is very upfront and helpful.

I agree with the above! Signed up just under a week ago and am extremely pleased so far.. if you are new to Linux like me then it will be daunting for sure, but some of the folks on this forum are great and a google usually yields the answer

The question for Chris is not whether he can create a kick-ass VDS system but whether or not he can keep it going.

I've seen several small companies start out providing excellent customer service and an excellent product and then get overwhelmed by customers; the product inevitably slips.

Right now this is a one-man shop; what will happen when Chris needs to hire people? Is he a good manager? (I'm an excellent computer geek who has a proven track record of being bad at it when given a management job.)

I'm just saying your questions need to be oriented towards your future plans and the future plans of Linode; right now the service is excellent and I am extremely pleased with their product and service; Chris has created the best VDS system out there.

As for me, I'm a customer, and I have no regrets. I've settled my anxieties about the future of Linode; if Chris get surly or the systems start going down, I can move to another VDS with (worst-case scenario) a day or two of downtime.

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John Schofield
Apple Certified Technical Coordinator
Office Mechanic Consulting
Mac, Unix, and PC Computer Support
www.officemechanic.com

I may be a little off base here -- but linode.com is not a stand alone venture I do not think. The parent company "shore" has been around for a long time. I had read good things about them long ago and far away....And I think linode.com is just a branch off of that tree.

Plus -- I would rather have 1 quality person full time than a few young geeks getting paid by the ticket in between games of Unreal Tournament and cheap beer any day.

Plus -- we have 3 people at work responsible for over 100 mission criticle Unix boxen and they seem to do just fine. So 1 guy running 5 or 6 UML setups should be reasonable enough.

I have be with linode about week. I am as about bootcamp or newbie as you get. I like this system so much I am trying to keep it a secret from my custumers that is how hot i think this linode is. Tech support and forum to me has been mind boggling good(every question has been answered to the T and then some). The problem I have is what questions I am not smart enough to ask.

Linode is the bomb!

I've had a linode for a couple of weeks. I've been a Linux user for over 10 years, and have had my own co-located server on the net for the past 7 or so. In fact, that server is itself a UML host running a couple instances of Linux. So why should I buy a linode when I can provide the same service myself (for free, basically)? I needed an offsite "machine" to do backup DNS and backup MX for my own UML's, and wanted full control over it. I may very well have the most boring linode here, but it's been serving me very well.

caker has been extremely responsive to any issues (which have been few and very very minor so far), and I am extremely impressed with his setup. Being someone who has set up and run their own UML host, I've got to say that this is the best UML setup I've seen yet.

I haven't had any speed issues. Most of the time my linode uses very little CPU, but I do run Gentoo on it. When I have compiled packages, the performance has been very good. No downtime for me yet. Network performance has been outstanding.

Can caker keep things going as this place grows? I think so.

In short - I highly recommend linode.

Looks like a good thread to split with the Testimonials forum

Good point.. I'm going to copy my post over there.