[mdlug] Looking for Shell Accounts

[Brandon F]

Hello everyone,

First of all I want to say hello to everyone again, I'm a longtime reader
but first time poster.

I manage a small BPO team and a couple of my members want to expand their
skills beyond Level 1.  I've been recommending Linux to them based on my
appreciation for the toolset and the opportunity it can give them to get out
of helpdesk hell.  So far we've all been studying for the first two Linux
Professionals Institute certification tests but while I have a few working
systems, my people are pretty green.

Can anyone recommend a good place to buy shell access so they can get their
hands dirty and dig into a system with little consequence?  I'm thinking
bare bones Ubuntu (that's what they're learning at ITT) with just a BASH
shell and they can get Apache, PHP, etc installed from there.  Also I'm
looking for a place where they can take snapshots and easily restore if they
seriously break anything.  I did this a few years back and it helped me
tremendously but I wasn't able to choose the distro and had to go through an
intermediary for any high level issues.

The only other thing is price.  Something with >5GB of space and no more
than $15 a month would be ideal.

Thanks for your time and any responses.

Brandon