Thank you for a useful constructive comment. Lots of negativity elsewhere sure erodes the soul. The VPS is for a game processing engine I'm creating working to do reasonably sophisticated processing then updating a database that feeds a website. The kind of thing you can't do in a shared web server where scripts have a 30 second time out. I will have it professionally managed when I launch (months away) but the VPS is mainly for performance testing., I have a Linux box at home running Ubuntu 12:04 which er does have a desktop- easier to setup a server version then add desktop than install desktop and add servers, I'll take your advice about Vi. Being a Windows developer by day, I'm used to that environment and Programmers notebook etc but you make a good point about Vi

Though I didn't use a GUI in my article, there are many ways a GUI (I'm thinking Windows Explorer) can be used to select files by size, file type for copying etc faster than from a command line. You can select multiple files from up or down a hierarchy of folders. On Linux, it's not so clear cut. Back in the Dos days in the early 1990s Xtree Gold pissed over anything you could do in Dos. That was a GUI that kicked ass. WinSCP does make working with Putty a lot easier.

It was a few seconds of madness thinking it because RDP on Windows makes life a bit easier but I did say " I decided to bite the bullet and stick to using the terminal." and like you said did just use putty and WinSCP. I may be from the Windows world but I'm increasing finding the terminal way ok.

I'm self taught in Linux server management and definitely not experienced with server management but I'm willing to try, make mistakes and learn enough to get me going. I consider myself a Linux noob (I'm from the Windows world) and my interest is programming a game not having to administer a server, but I want to set it up myself not have it managed.(once it's setup then I'll gladly pass it over to professionals). I've got my own Ubuntu PC at home and use it to make mistakes on rather than the VPS. I didn't install a GUI; that was a passing thought of madness though I did that on the server at home. As you said, most of the services are already setup and its been really easy. I've used Webmin in the past but Ubuntu and Webmin don't play nicely. My point in writing this article was to explain what it's like for me and I'll eat up al the advice (well not the nasty emails). that people here can give. The article appearing here on Slashdot was a very big surprise to me.