Custom kernel support is actually available for certain distributions on DigitalOcean, though it's not widely marketed. Right now, Debian 8, Ubuntu 15.04, Ubun

Custom kernel support is actually available for certain distributions on DigitalOcean, though it's not widely marketed. Right now, Debian 8, Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 15.10, Fedora 23 and FreeBSD all allow you to control your kernel version. The next LTS release of Ubuntu in April, 16.04, will also allow you to customize your kernel.