I would recommend the same thing for the same kind of people, but only after you do it on a virtual machine (VirtualBox) on your local machine. It's a much cheaper alternative (free), and you'll have a better idea what you want and what to do when you move to Linode.
Getting a VPS was my first real foray into Linux and I've learnt so much since I started by just messing around. The Linode library has also been a great source of help.
I recommend anyone who likes to spend hours perfectly configuring services they will likely never use, because it's fun, should get one to hone their terminal chops.