After we've had our resources doubled, I felt compelled to post here.

Here's an executive summary: Linode is incredible, and if you're thinking of buying a VPS account, you should get one here.

The User Mode Linux technology linode uses is superior to the more common Virtuozzo systems for skilled linux users. That's because we have the same kind of control over our virtual accounts as we'd have over a physical machine sitting on our desks.

What that means, in practical terms, is that I can shutdown and boot my VPS through a web interface. I can login on a console if I munge my networking.

I can pick whatever distro I want, and install it. I can wipe the machine clean, and reinstall my distro. Or I can wipe it off and install a new distro. All without the intervention of linode admins, using the web interface.

I can boot a "live cd" distro, mount my disk images, and do whatever I want to them. I've used that to pipe a compressed disk image of my vps to my home machine as a backup. And the live cd distro doesn't soak up any of my disk space, it's given to us as a bonus.

The partition manager lets us resize file systems. So I can take my partition, shrink it, create a new file system, copy stuff over to it, and then wipe off the original file system for a reinstall.

I could even create what's essentially a dual boot system -- one that would let me choose which linux install I want to go into.

All of this without linode admins doing anything, just from the web interface.

Linode has aggressively increased what we get without raising prices. My RAM has increased dramatically, as has my disk space and network transfer quota. You don't have to ask for it -- it just happens. As I type this, I'm basking in the glow of a surprise doubling of my account's resources -- with no price increase.

I've never had any kind of resource contention problem either. My linode has always worked, never had any problems, never been slow or sluggish, etc. It's been extremely reliable and dependable.

You can do pretty much anything on your own, with the web interface. But when you do contact the admins for some reason, they are the best. I mean that literally -- these guys are the best unix/linux admins I've ever seen. They don't make mistakes, they answer questiosn quickly, they know pretty much everything about what they're doing, and they're always helpful.

As a practical matter, the recent doubling has a big impact on what we can do with our accounts. We have enough disk space to make practical dual boot systems -- which is a huge benefit for people who want to switch distros or do big upgrades. We have enough diskspace to do local backups, too.

And the RAM means that you can run a GUI desktop on a cheap account, which is a huge thing for me.

I have never had a better experience with anyone providing any kind of internet service or hosting, ever. And I would be surprised if I ever do.

I have to agree with you 100%. A year and a half ago I scoured the internet looking for the best VPS host. I’m a college kid, and any reoccurring expense is something I like to look at very carefully. One thing I always like to do before buying anything is read about it, and what people have to say. That’s why I’m posting this here in hopes some might use this information in their decision.

Anyways, I decided to give linode.com a spin. As said above, one of the things I love the most is the ability to install multiple distros and manage your own partitions all from the web interface. I’m a newer guy on the linux scene and enjoy the ability to play around with different flavors for a while, but at the end of the day boot back into my stable distro so my websites and email are all back online and normal. This feature is I believe one of the BIGGEST advantages linode has.

I know you may view the “System Network Status” forum and be concerned with all the “Reboot” thread, but honestly, over my 1.5 years, I think my linode host has been down twice for maybe a total for 1-2 hours. (99.9998477% host uptime, guess.)

I’ve considered ditching my linode recently because I’m doing less web design than I have in the past and can’t quite justify the cost, but it is so handy to have a server when you need it for whatever little task that I still keep sacrificing the $20 b/c I know it waste more than $20 in so many other ways.

The last thing is that unlike pretty much every other service to which you subscribe where their “big announcement” is an increase in rates and some made up by PR enhanced features, linode’s rates haven’t changed and they just keep giving more system resources.

And, I couldn’t end this without commenting on the support. Every time I’ve had a problem, I’d submit a ticket and hit up the irc channel asking if caker tasaro or mike was around and within 30 minutes at the most, they’d reply back that they’re working on whatever the issue might have been. They really do know there stuff.. no question about that.

Many thanks linode!

Andrew

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http://www.knehcsa.com

Some of the competition may have been creeping closer to Linode over the last year, but by giving us double everything for the same price, Linode has left the other VPS suppliers in the dust.

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/ Peter

Hmmm - is there a bug in GCC or one of the standard math libraries? I get 99.9998478% which is clearly a huge difference.

100*(1 - (2/(365*1.5*24)))

James

FWIW, Panix Internet has just announced their intention to increase their v-colo service to similar levels, although their web site hasn't been updated yet.

I use linode and v-colo for redundancy.

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Rgds
Stephen
(Linux user since kernel version 0.11)