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100X better than simply web hosting... Linode

Agreed. Though running services can be bad for beginners, its a lot more adaptable than getting someone else to do it. The amount you can do with any VPS is far and beyond what any shared hosting will do, but keeping it secure is important.

I've now got two Linodes, one in the UK and one in Atlanta, and they're both excellent. Great value for money and speed. Only had one 2 hour period of downtime and they were keeping everyone very well informed. Their support staff are excellent and I can't recommend them enough. Upgrading a linode and their pricing for it is just too easy. Bandwidth and latency, even for running small gaming servers is awesome!

100X better than simply web hosting... Linode

Agreed. Though running services can be bad for beginners, its a lot more adaptable than getting someone else to do it. The amount you can do with any VPS is far and beyond what any shared hosting will do, but keeping it secure is important.

I've now got two Linodes, one in the UK and one in Atlanta, and they're both excellent. Great value for money and speed. Only had one 2 hour period of downtime and they were keeping everyone very well informed. Their support staff are excellent and I can't recommend them enough. Upgrading a linode and their pricing for it is just too easy. Bandwidth and latency, even for running small gaming servers is awesome!

100X better than simply web hosting... Linode

Agreed. Though running services can be bad for beginners, its a lot more adaptable than getting someone else to do it. The amount you can do with any VPS is far and beyond what any shared hosting will do, but keeping it secure is important.

I've now got two Linodes, one in the UK and one in Atlanta, and they're both excellent. Great value for money and speed. Only had one 2 hour period of downtime and they were keeping everyone very well informed. Their support staff are excellent and I can't recommend them enough. Upgrading a linode and their pricing for it is just too easy. Bandwidth and latency, even for running small gaming servers is awesome!

1. If you're looking for a shared web host solution (maybe under 50-100k unique hits a month), you can't go wrong with http://www.asmallorange.com/ . I used their "small" shared hosting package for several years and never had a problem.

2. If you're looking for a VPS with quite a bit more available resources than a web host solution and you like to setup your own *nix box, you'd be good with http://www.linode.com/ http://www.slicehost.com/ (those two primarily support Linux, but you can setup a NetBSD Xen slice by hand if you are so inclined), or if you really don't want any brakes when it comes to setting up your Xen VPS, http://www.prgmr.com/ (they also primarily support Linux, but they have a HOWTO on their wiki on how to setup NetBSD.)

3. I haven't found a good unmanaged dedicated host yet, though I hear http://www.softlayer.com/ is great. If you want a managed dedicated host, you can't go wrong with http://www.rackspace.com/ .

100X better than simply web hosting... Linode

Precisely. On a Linode Linux VPS, for example, this can be accomplished via the console using the following command:

ssh-keygen -l -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key.pub

why can't I get a static IP for my home internet connection? In order to get a static IP, I have to upgrade to a "business" account which costs $200/month more and doesn't really offer any improvements other than a static IP. Yup. $200/month for a static IP.

just because your isp wants $200 for a business connection does not mean that static ip addresses actually cost $200. for example, linode charges somwhat less

All new accounts include one IP and are permitted to add an additional IP via the Linode Manager for $1.00 per month.

Buy a Linode ;).

Sorry, I just couldn't resist.

Oh, really? Granted, that's documentation intended for server administrators, but I'd squarely categorize them as "system users."

For $20/month you could get a Linode, and run pretty much anything you want off of it. As a bonus, you also gets speeds that your local ISP will never offer you. If you're really paranoid, you could put your public key on the machine and encrypt all incoming email. Just hope you don't lose your private key..

If you're taking that approach, you'll probably be okay :). I would argue that such a system, coupled with a basic interface for submitting comments, would definitely qualify as a CMS (with the most commonly used type of CMS being blogging systems), and should be viewed as a blogging platform.

Most people go the opposite direction and insist on rendering everything dynamically. I like the approach you're considering much better; in fact, it's exactly the approach I took when I wrote the CMS that drives the Linode Library.

Incidentally, you should probably include automation to sync your stuff to the server/directory instead of getting all laborious with it ;).

There are some sectors that have continued to grow at a pretty good clip throughout the recession. For example, I work for Linode.com.

You can get reliable virtual private servers (ie, windows/linux running under VM with full admin access) for about $20 a month, which is probably not very much more than the power bill for an additional always-on computer in your home.

As someone who dealt with the hassle of doing the 'not a busy server on home connection' for years, I started kicking myself for it once I started paying for shared and then the virtually dedicated since it took my having to deal with connectivity / ip changes / hardware flakiness out of the equation and gave me way better bandwidth to boot.

These days, I am personally using Linode (referral link) / (non-referral) and couldn't be happier. There's cheaper out there, but reliability (due to understaffing) becomes a question sooner or later.

You can get reliable virtual private servers (ie, windows/linux running under VM with full admin access) for about $20 a month, which is probably not very much more than the power bill for an additional always-on computer in your home.

As someone who dealt with the hassle of doing the 'not a busy server on home connection' for years, I started kicking myself for it once I started paying for shared and then the virtually dedicated since it took my having to deal with connectivity / ip changes / hardware flakiness out of the equation and gave me way better bandwidth to boot.

These days, I am personally using Linode (referral link) / (non-referral) and couldn't be happier. There's cheaper out there, but reliability (due to understaffing) becomes a question sooner or later.

and then pick a host or service that will be around in a decade or two

I'd like to think my favorite host (Linode.com, for those interested in quality VPS hosting) will be around in a decade or two, but I can't even be sure the term "hosting" will mean the same thing by then.

http://www.linode.com/api/ Perl, Python, PHP bindings that let you manipulate your DNS entries, $20 a month will buy you a linode that runs the DNS server, decent security setup lets you distribute control without giving out your master passwords (and revoke access as necessary). I use them for my DNS management for a number of domains and I must say no one else I've seen has a superior DNS entry interface.

You should really look into Linode. They manage the underlying hardware, and you are the sole root on each of your virtual servers. Loads of bandwidth, cheap per month. I've never heard of them descending into a user's filesystem, because there's no reason to. Management of the virtual server is completely up to you.

Absolutely agree that cloud hosting services offer significant economies over traditional hosting. While we're naming vendors, a more complete list of cloud vendors includes the following (and most offer a much fuller range of web hosting services than EC2!):

US: Amazon EC2, MediaTemple, GoGrid, Mosso, Linode, Joyent

UK: ElasticHosts, FlexiScale

Complete "anonymity" online is a pipe dream... eventually They will track you down. Using encryption, you can hide in plain sight.

My advice would be to skip looking "offshore" and just find a local, reputable hosting company that will defend your rights to the maximum legal extent (perhaps one such as Riseup that intentionally keeps minimal logs), then rent a VPS or (probably better yet) colocate your own machine, use a completely encrypted filesystem on the server, and only support SSL connections.

With an encrypted filesystem, even if evil authority figures seize the machine, in theory they could not read your data without your private key. Keep minimal or sanitized logs. Run an encrypted email server, an anonymizing web proxy, a Tor router, an OpenVPN server... the possibilities are endless.

Linode offers great VPS hosting starting at only $20/month, with support for encrypted filesystem images.

Are you in the Dallas datacenter? Because if not, you might want to reboot again. ;-)

I moved all of my server stuff to a virtual linux image at linode.com.

The cheapest plans are under $20/mo. and provide plenty of what I need for a box that hosts light web, email and ssh trafic. Connectivity is good and the customer service is great for such a cheap option. The only thing I had to do was get over the mental block of sharing hardware, but over the years they keep raising the amount of memory and other resources (and not the cost) so it performs pretty well. Their remote management tools are pretty slick as well. You get X amount of space, and if you want to use that for 5 different distro images that you swap in and out you can.

One caveat though: linode does not back up your server image, so it's up to you to handle backing up your data. I got burned by being lazy in this regard when my host machine suffered a multiple drive failure hosing the raid set with all of the server images (My plan is 16 to 1 contention, so it was at most 16 people affected). I keep hoping they'll offer a backup service as an add-on where they just snapshot my image every night or something, but nothing so far.

But if you just need a well connected linux box (that you have full root control over), linode is a pretty cost effective solution.

I'm personally really happy with my Linode For $20/month, I get a UML-based system with 256MB of Ram and a bunch of hard drive space. Granted, it can be a bit slow at times, especially if other users are heavily using your node at the same time. It's perfect for Web/Mail hosting, plus you do have root access, so you can get it to do whatever you want!

Yes, the parent is right on. An imap sync program (or unison, mentioned above), seem to be a good idea. I've been researching this a lot myself. I have a few basic needs for mail that must be met.

1 IMAP Account, 2 identities (one gets forwarded in and filed with sieve rules).
2 PGP Keys; not using subkeys, home and work.
Ability to access email from my personal server on the internet, or my laptop when disconnected.
Works with OS X contacts so I can use the missing sync to keep my phone's addy book up to date.

Unfortunately you'd think I'm the only person on the planet who needs this. Thunderbird doesn't work with the address book, Mail.app has big time problems checking the sub folders (even with a sync on check hack) for new mail and remembering flags. It's really annoying to see you have 15 new mails, that YOU'VE ALREADY READ.

I'm really about to go through the hassle of using an imap sync program and mutt to handle all my email. I haven't used mutt much (went from Pine to a GUI IMAP client back in the 90s), but it's worth the hassle to know I can use the same email config when I SSH in, or am on my desktop, and have it all work. Now it's just a matter of finding time to sit down, write a mutt config, learn all the shortcuts, and set up syncing.

Another thing, if the original poster wants their own mail server, I'll plug Linode every time I get a chance. As long as you don't overload the server package you get (I have a 200 that's overkill for me) it's the best thing a geek can have. You can run whatever you need to, and when a major upgrade goes bad you have full console access to boot another distro and fix your mess. It's on 24/7 in a real data center and you can run whatever you need to with no restrictions. More stable than Xen, and the service can't be beat. Oh, and they're way more affordable than a dedicated server.

Now if only I can figure out a stable working offline email system that meets my needs and isn't buggy.

Bit off-topic, but if you need those kinds of features (compilers, custom Perl modules, etc.) maybe check out one of the user-mode Linux Web hosts like Linode.com – they've been running my site for a few months, and I'd say it's probably the best thing since Al Gore invented the Interwebs :-) You get your own distribution, your own choice of server configurations... it's like a dedicated server without the dedicated server. [Not trying to sound like an advertisement or anything like that, just a very happy user recommending a useful service.]

I can install any distribution I want, or pick from a set of initial distributions they provide. The kernel is the only software component I can't change. I can update to newer versions or apply security patches as often as I want, without waiting for the administrator of the system to do it.

The web-based interface lets me reboot the system with a browser, or even boot it on a different root partition -- I occassionally copy the root partition to an unused partition so that I can use it as a backup if the original one gets borked. There's also a way to access the "console" if networking gets misconfigured or I have to boot in single user mode.

But the technology itself kicks ass. For example, my Web site is hosted by Linode.com, which offers User Mode Linux-based servers for very low prices, which means you can have full root access without needing a dedicated server – not trying to get off topic or advertise or anything, just mentioning a very good example of the technology in use.

These guys(Xen) have all these companies donating money to them, but have been beaten to kernel inclusion by UML.

Being the first to the party doesn't always mean you're going to the best; see DevFS vs. udev.

Xen has much greater performance than UML and supports more operating systems. While UML is currently more mature and stable than Xen, it's only a matter of time before Xen surpasses UML as the preferred virtual server technology. Hell, even Linode, a strong proponent of UML technology and virtual server hosting provider is migrating to Xen.

FYI, I'm currently running a Xen-based system with 15 virtual server instances for a system administration course at UC Berkeley on a server built with cheap off the shelf components (AMD Athlon 64 2800+, 1 GB RAM) and everything is quite snappy. It'd be difficult to even approach such usability with UML, and I'm using Xen 2.0.7. I can't see what Xen 3.0 will bring.

Either online, or in RL. Talk to people, ask them which hosting company they use, if they are happy with it and why. Read the blogs of people of people you know, trust or who are into similar things as you. Jump on usenet, go to teh forums at places like webhostingtalk or at the actual hosting service itself and read what people are saying.

Ignore articles published by news sites, magazines and the like. They are out to make money and hence are biased. You cannot get a feel for how good a hosting service is, or how reliable it is, or how good their support is by playing with the hosting service's web interface for 5 minutes or by comparing feature lists, which is exactly what the journalist that wrote the article did.

I was looking for a hosting service a few weeks ago and I immediately thought of two: bytemark.co.uk and Linode. Why? Because a know a few people who use bytemark.co.uk and are happy with it and I have aread a lot about about Linode being good on places like Planet Gnome. So I compared the cost features of the two and chose the one that looked the best.

The information is out there, you just need to use it.

I changed roots password to 'letmein' also. haha i mirrored a mirror but I'm a bit slow with html, I don't know how to remove the mirror text

Yes -- same thing happened here.

I've gotten two dmcas. First one went to my shared hosting provider, who cut off my http, on a friday around 5pm, and it had to stay off until I could contact them monday.

Second time, I just got an email from my vps provider, linode.com, passing it along, and saying "handle it". I actually put up a forum thread on their site praising them for it.

If any of you want a good provider, go with Linode. The staff is great, service is great... no real negatives to it.

In case you were wondering, here is a link to the first DMCA notice I recieved: http://www.oldos.org/history/oms/letter.htm. Of course, that was two years ago. We're back up, and legal at http://www.oldos.org/.

I apologize if this sounds like an advertisement, but have you looked into dedicated hosting services? Or the cheaper option is VPS hosting from places like RimuHosting or Linode.com? User mode linux in any of these two VPS plans can actually be very cost effective, especially if you run lots of sites each with low bandwidth needs since apache virtual hosting is allowed. Peter at RimuHosting is really knowledgeable and can help you setup the site the way you want it and will even help tweak it to its max performance. The cost is really affordable -- just skimp on Starbucks a couple times a month and you have it paid for.

http://li3-33.members.linode.com/~sunny/slashdot-m irror/www.hamar.sk/sphere/screenshots.htm

if the bandwidth gets out of hand, I'll shut this mirror down

Sunny Dubey

If Sun can provide a full-featured OS, the slickness of SUSE (easy package management/admin gui), good range of drivers (including nvidia/nforce) then ISPs may well run Solaris.

Micro$oft = "Cheat with your assignment"

"The single line coding format that we all use is an obsolete product from the 1950's when a byte of computer RAM memory cost more than a good restaurant dinner. Those days are gone."

Wrong!
http://linuxdevices.com/

Know your roots.
http://www.gnu.org/
http://www.linode.com/products/

Please support the FreeNet Project, and this is why your should!
http://news.com.com/Digital+Agenda+Homeland+securi ty--A+global+assault+on+anonymity/2009-1009-540594 7.html

http://news.netcraft.com/

I am doing so well, because I am standing on the shoulders of great women and men.
Work smart, and have fun,
-Steve

I've been very happy with Linode.com. They also have Gentoo and Mandrake images to start off with.

Build PHP as a CGI, and print #!/path/to/php at the top of every php file. (Like you do with Perl) Now wrap it with suExec and you're all set. Observe the *slight* performance hit.

Is the performance hit really all that *slight* if you run PHP as a CGI rather than an Apache module? I had the impression that it was quite significant but I could be wrong.

Anyway, the security of PHP (and I guess potentially other scripting engines) running as an Apache module on cheap PHP shared hosting is a very real problem. My solution to it has been to move to Virtual Private Servers. The prices are comparable to good quality shared hosting and its infinitely more flexible. I'm a happy customer at Linode but others I've used or looked at are:

Rimu Hosting
Rose Hosting
Digital Daze

linode.com offers UML-based hosting as well. [no, i neither work there or use them]

... also Linode.com, which has the largest deployment of UML.

If she's interested in programming as an intellectual challenge, I think PLT-Scheme's DrScheme is your tool of choice. I've never used HtDP, but just following the built-in tutorials that come with DrScheme is very instructive. This is especially true if you are willing to set aside the goal of building some particular program. When I get bored, I will occasionally do a problem or two from the DrScheme tutorial. It's much more fun than dumb desktop games like Solitare. Personally, I think of it more as solving puzzles than as "coding." (It's also a Debian package, so life is good.)

If she wants something to tinker with, I suggest getting a little colo box (a UML box isn't too expensive) and hacking around a little with apache, perl, python, shell and web-ish stuff. It's not always strictly programming, but it's a lot of fun and results can be seen without a huge amount of time/knowledge/effort, and she'll have something tangible for her efforts. Well, as tangible as anything in computing can be, anyway.

It's been a while since I've worked in an environment with so little RAM -- I don't know how/if things will run.

I see that the base plan for several of these includes 64 MB of RAM, but I see that at least RimuHosting states that Java servlets won't run with 64 MB of RAM, and more is recommended if using a MySQL database, I don't see anything yet on Linode's site about practical requirements. Does anyone have any experiences with what's necessary/practical. It seems that on the base plan, doubling the RAM from 64 MB to 128 MB also doubles the entire monthly cost. I'm just interested in using it as a hobbyist, and it wouldn't be high volume.

I am hosting one of my business sites on Linode.com (platostn.com).
It has been great to me. I love having a cheap web account that I can use emerge on (I am a Gentoo fan).
You get to pick your distro with Linode.
Also, I should say that I was using hub.org (freebsd setup). They had HORRIBLE reliability. There was too much "scheduled downtime" and way too much unscheduled downtime.
+1 linode
-Jackson

I've have a virtual server from Linode.com for the past few months, and I'm pretty impressed with the whole idea of VMs. Cheaper than a dedicated server, but just as functional.