SSD isn't some magical word or feature - case in point, linode's non-ssd offering beats the pants off DO's ssd

Linode may outperform a similar DO box CPU-wise, but IO is no contest:

Here's a 512MB DO writing a large file:

  dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/out bs=1M count=4k; rm -f /tmp/out
  4096+0 records in
  4096+0 records out
  4294967296 bytes (4.3 GB) copied, 16.1503 s, 266 MB/s

A 2GB Linode of mine doing the same:

  dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/output bs=1M count=4k; rm -f /tmp/output
  4096+0 records in
  4096+0 records out
  4294967296 bytes (4.3 GB) copied, 36.4609 seconds, 118 MB/s