Quote:
Originally Posted by ruario
Note: I am actually running Arch on the VPS/VDS but as you say they provide Slackware.
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Last night I switched the VPS from Arch to Slackware (13.37), so I thought I'd give an update to anyone else who stumbles on this thread.
The default Slackware setup they provide is quite spartan. You will almost certainly want to bulk it up a bit to give you a usable environment. I pretty much tripped its size but then I did add a full range of development tools (so that I could build some stuff from Slackbuilds should I want/need to). It does come with slackpkg, so it is fairly easy to build up. Though slackpkg did print some minor errors initially after finding some *.new files (after updating packages) due to the lack of tput (provided by ncurses), which wasn't yet present.
That said, starting with a small setup and letting the user build it up as suits their needs is quite reasonable. Disk space is obviously much more limited than on a real machine, so you probably want to keep things fairly small to leave room for your files.
I did also notice that it was running a different kernel than ships with Slackware 13.37:
Code:
$ uname -r
3.0.18-linode43
Rather than:
Code:
$ uname -r
2.6.37.6
Also lsmod reports nothing and /boot is empty. I presume this is all related to the fact that Slackware is actually running under a Xen hypervisor and that is the kernel of the host system. I'd also assume it was the same under Arch previously but I simply failed to notice!
Anyway, it doesn't seem to cause me any problems and presumably other VPS providers using a Xen-based setup would be exactly the same. Nonetheless I thought I'd mention it in case anyone was wishing to run a specific kernel.
In summary, it is a nice slim setup and most importantly, it works!
Also I've had zero problems with Linode the whole time I have used them (over 2 years now) and zero downtime that I am aware of.
Edit: Just found this review comparing Linode and Slicehost that might interest people
http://www.iexplain.org/linode-vs-slicehost-review/
Edit2: It seems you can run a distro supplied kernel (or indeed any kernel) if you so desire:
http://library.linode.com/linode-pla.../pv-grub-howto