Linode rocks. Seriously, read my review. I was talking to a co-worker (whom I converted to Linode as well) about how I would pay double the amount to keep my Linode now that I know how much I use it. Don't tell them that, they're cheap :) If you find this article helpful (or my article about moving VM's to and from Linode), please consider clicking one of the links in this article to sign up for a Linode - if you sign up for 90 days, I'll get $20 credited to my account.
I was setting up a second Linode that was to be a testing ground for some StackScripts I'm working on. The new Linode will eventually replace my existing one. For whatever reason, the most recent version of CentOS they had available was 5.3. Not a big deal, I can 'yum upgrade' up to 5.4 after installation. Well, after doing so, I found that a lot of features that I wanted had been stripped out. In Linode's defense, it's in their best interest to offer very stripped down images for their customers. The one feature I wanted that I couldn't get enabled was SELinux, and simply installing the packages still wouldn't let me use 'setenforce 1' to get it turned on. My best guess as to why is that the Linode kernel didn't support it, but I honestly didn't troubleshoot it too much. I really wanted root LVM capabilities as well, so I decided that a full-on anaconda based installation was the way to go. Plus, I couldn't find anything in the forums about it, so there was the lure of being the first to do it ;-)
Well, thanks to the flexibility offered by Linode, not only can you do a anaconda-based installation (with optional Kickstart), but you can do so using the GUI over VNC if you're so inclined!
