[newbie] Equivalent to PHP?

[Paul Rubin]

Gilles <nospam at nospam.com> writes:
> Do Python hosters provide a VM so that it's just like a remote Linux
> server where I'm free to install whatever I want, or do they force
> users to use specific versions of Python and specific frameworks eg.
> Django?

There are both kinds.  The first kind is called a Virtual Private Server
(VPS).  The second kind is called shared hosting.  VPS is very flexible
but shared hosting can be cheaper, and easier to use if you have no
sysadmin skills.  I'm assuming you don't have enough workload to want to
rent a physical server (sometimes called a "dedi", short for dedicated
server) or colo (colocation, meaning you buy your own hardware and
install it in a rack slot that you rent at the data center).


OVH (www.ovh.com/fr) is the biggest French hosting place and they have
all three types of service, I think.  Their low cost branch is
www.kimsufi.fr which has extremely attractive prices.  I have heard
mixed things about them: you get a lot of resources for the money, but
that they can be hard to deal with in various ways.  So it sounds not
great but not terrible.  Kimsufi dedis are cheaper than anything
comparable that we can get in the USA, so I have been interested in
renting one for some of my own stuff, but I haven't pursued this yet.

www.webhostingtalk.com and www.lowendbox.com are good places to research
this sort of thing.  lowendbox.com is specifically for cheap VPS's.