Invariably, everyone seems to have a problem with their hosting provider at some point. Heck, even Amazon went down for over a day recently! I don't have experience hosting on Linode but I can say that their knowledge base is by far the best which I think speaks very well for them. And from what I've heard, Linode is a solid provider.
I am currently on RackSpace cloud which is a hair more expensive but has been great so far. Their servers are in Dallas mostly if that matters.
