I realize that this tutorial is probably a bit stale (I tried something similar on my macs using Qemu (actually Q - http://www.kju-app.org/ but that was some time ago).

Don't know if people are looking for alternatives for Windows (gasp) hosting on Amazon, but if you are, take a look at GoGrid . It's a true alternative to EC2. To be upfront, I'm the Technology Evangelist for GoGrid and have been asked by a lot of people about how to run Windows on EC2...you can't right now. That is part of the reason we released Windows AND Linux images on GoGrid.

Here is a quick comparison between GoGrid and EC2:  http://blog.gogrid.com/2008/06/17/comparison-gogrid-cloud-versus-amazon-ec2/

If you are just looking for a place to teach yourself Linux or actually roll out an implementation, give it a try! Let me know if anyone has questions.

 -Michael