I have a couple of linodes as well, but they are very spread in performance. They average at about 5 cores (you only get garanteed 1 core), that perform at about half a xeon each. My 4 core ramnode performed way better (except you can't run structural CPU usage there). If I take the average in performance decline over the last weeks, I seriously doubt one should get one for xpm mining alone. You might get lucky and get a block a week, but it might just as well cost you.