if you have never SSH'd into anything before, I would recommend running a VPS and your shared hosting accounts in parallel until you get a better handle on Linu

if you have never SSH'd into anything before, I would recommend running a VPS and your shared hosting accounts in parallel until you get a better handle on Linux, then migrate your sites from shared hosting at that time. Although I haven't checked recently, from memory as far as pricing goes, slicehost $ > linode $ > prgmr.com. Prgmr is true do it yourself though, so if your a complete linux newbie you may want to go the middle ground and get linode.com, and use the slicehost tutorials to get it up and running