New to hosting; what do I need?

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The review of this web host was started by vulcangreg on 2009-02-18 03:37:54:

I am setting up a new website, my first, and would like a quick rundown on what to look for in a web host. In the mean time, I will be reading these forums to glean every bit of knowledge that I can. Here is a list of the technology I will be using:

Apache Tomcat
Java (JSP, Servlet, Java Mail, Java classes - not J2EE)
MySql

The site will allow customer signup, posting, searching, etc. I hope to build the site into a heavily used site (don’t we all). Being new to hosting; I am unsure of what I need out of a host. For example, do I go with a VPS solution like slicehost.com, a full server, etc? Also, if I go with a VPS, who takes care of installing patches to the server, restarts, etc?

It seems most hosts go with Linux, for good reason, but I am not a Unix/Linux guy. Is there a distro that is better than others? How hard is it to learn enough to manage the slice/server? Can anyone recommend a good book on Linux for web hosting?

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