for linode at this pricepoint its one cpu core (I have the old linode 1024 which is now offering me a free upgrade to linode 2048), both are one cpu core. On the product page the spec of the core is not disclosed. But I have got this info from the OS running on my linode.
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2680 v2 @ 2.80GHz
A cpu with a RRP of 1700USD
Its turbo clock hits 3.6ghz, 25meg cache, and 10 cores, 20 threads, pretty beefy chip.
Bear in mind with a vps, they not typically aimed at people who are going to be chewing up cpu cycles, they good for stuff that will use low cpu cycles but still needs good connectivity. Also useful of course for development purposes or testing. The cpu core is unlikely to not be contended with other users so if you pegging the cpu for long periods you could get kicked off.
I took a different approach in some newer machines, in france I am actually leasing a dedicated machine for about £25 month, which is a xeon 32 gig of ram, the xeon not as beefy as this chip but is still nice, and I run vmware esxi on it so have effectively unlimited virtual machines for that price. Since I admin the physical machine I can do things like allocate all cpu cores to any vps I like.
By comparison renting or colocating a physical machine and installing an OS directly onto it feels antiquated now, I lease a server in america that costs me over £70 month, the spec of the entire machine is weaker than a VPS I run on my £25 french box. Upgrading ram or cpu resources on a VPS is a very quick process vs a physical machine. Not to mention the benefits of snapshots, remote consoles etc.
I can confirm linode does not have any BSD images.