While the incident is unfortunate, I do give them credit for being up-front, honest, and relatively speedy in their response. Sad to say, I'm not sure a lot of

While the incident is unfortunate, I do give them credit for being up-front, honest, and relatively speedy in their response. Sad to say, I'm not sure a lot of other hosting providers would be as quick to admit culpability. That said, there's no way that resetting the root password should be something a customer service rep can do. Particularly when Linode are very explicit about not being a service for newbs - and are in general unwilling to provide help setting up a Linux system.