Frustrated with slow VM provisioning in Proxmox compared to BinaryLane, I used a $200 Digital Ocean credit from a podcast promotion to test how quickly a cloud VM can be spun up. A Debian droplet booted in about 42 seconds, but initial SSH access proved awkward, requiring me to dig through docs and the web console to set up a user since Debian blocks root login. Once I cleared that hurdle, the rest of the experience was fine...
