[dietrichepp]

Compared with virtualization, it would be more secure. If a dedicated ARM (or Atom) microserver were competitive with mid-range VPS, people would buy it.

Virtualization is "leaky", there are esoteric attacks against other guests on the same host that allow attackers to obtain encryption keys. Last time I checked, the mitigation strategy was to move to dedicated hardware.

I doubt dedicated microservers will be competetive with VPS for a while yet because you can't oversell them.

[EwanToo]

Dedicated Intel Atom hardware is already competitive with VPS services, for example you can see the Kimsufi stuff from OVH

https://www.ovh.co.uk/dedicated_servers/kimsufi.xml

Hosted in the USA or France, prices from £8.99 a month ($12?) for an Atom server with 2GB of RAM.

[raverbashing]

Well, in a sense, I can buy a RaspberryPi with the money of 2-3 months of linode (depending on the accessories you want)

But the "hard part" is not having the HW, but keeping it online 24/7. Geez, I don't even have DSL at home (long story)

With linode and others I can reinstall at the click of a button, I get a dedicated IP, etc

It may be easy depending on your situation, still, VPSs seems to have more advantages.