Never noticed the DreamHost Private Server thing but looking at the panel now, there it is. It looks like an interesting middle ground. I still do think there is value in a service where most everything is managed for you. Not everyone wants to or can administer a machine.

That said, my choice of provider in many ways had less to do with the product offering and more to do with my confidence in the company. I'm finding it more important that they (a) have good support with fast response times (b) make things reliable so that I rarely have to use their support in the first place and (c) if something goes wrong, they promptly fix it and take steps to make sure it doesn't happen again. Aside from the occasional question in the forums or irc, I haven't actually needed SliceHost's support so far, so it's too early to tell. That said, I feel the other two hosts have failed the above criteria in one way or another, hence the switch.

Steve: What package manager did you use? I remember a time when you had to download tarballs, compile and unpack everything yourself but I feel the current state of package managers is pretty damn painless.