I've moved to Windows Azure (for my Microsoft-using clients) and Amazon for the rest.

Linode support has been absolutely crude and even berating in their responses to me. They have lost all sense of professionalism.

It is sad to see a once promising hosting company go so far downhill so fast, but such is the nature of trying to be the lowest-cost option.

I'm an ex-Linode customer also and hosted with them for years before switching (around the time that they were hacked via the Coldfusion exploit) and I agree, it's sad how far they've dropped from being one of the best in quality/support to what they are now. I can't tell if it's because they're trying to scale up too fast or if theres some other issue however.

Also, Linode is not really the "lowest-cost" option as Digital ocean and similar providers offer better deals for the low price VPS market.