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I know the title says EC2, but if your just looking for a Linux box at roughly the same price, then linode is also a very good option. Railscasts has a couple of screencasts that deal directly with setting up a linux box with Rails and Postgres that I would highly recommend to someone just getting started. It is a pro cast, so it would cost 9 a month, but definitely worth the price.

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I think this is a great suggestion. Linode is much easier to get started with than AWS if scalability isn't a priority.

A linode VPS is just a standard linux server, while EC2 has lots of quirks.

For instance, AWS/EC2 has a variety of types of storage, and their persistence properties aren't always what you'd expect. So, EC2 requires you learn how to run a linux server plus a bunch of AWS specific stuff. Linode only requires basic linux administration skills.

If you are set on EC2, I found boto very useful for keeping track of my AWS resources.

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