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How To Use a Linux Virtual Private Server
Nerval's Lobster writes "Game developer David Bolton writes: 'For my development of Web games, I've hit a point where I need a Virtual Private Server. (For more on this see My Search for Game Hosting Begins.) I initially chose a Windows VPS because I know Windows best. A VPS is just an Internet-connected computer. "Virtual" means it may not be an actual physical computer, but a virtualized host, one of many, each running as if it were a real computer. Recently, though, I've run into a dead end, as it turns out that Couchbase doesn't support PHP on Windows. So I switched to a Linux VPS running Ubuntu server LTS 12-04. Since my main desktop PC runs Windows 7, the options to access the VPS are initially quite limited, and there's no remote desktop with a Linux server. My VPS is specified as 2 GB of ram, 2 CPUs and 80 GB of disk storage. The main problem with a VPS is that you have to self-manage it. It's maybe 90% set up for you, but you need the remaining 10%. You may have to install some software, edit a config file or two and occasionally bounce (stop then restart) daemons (Linux services), after editing their config files.'"
I just can't support an over commercialized, inferior, bloated distro. Debian Stable is the epitome of long term support as a result of the slow release cycle. As a result, you get security updates indefinitely and can install newer software if you want it from backports or source, or install the packages DotDeb for lamp stacks.
As a side note, I have to mention that I have never had an Ubuntu install of any type - desktop or server - that didn't fall into dependency hell upon doing a dist-upgrade. Archlinux for desktops, Debian for servers.