But I have a question about this, and I hope someone from the community can help me. Is it possible to accept the offer without a credit card but by using a Paypal account as payment method instead?
I can't see the promotion on the link you stated.
FYI, the details of the promo can be found on their homepage (
https://www.linode.com/).
That specific promotion does not appear to be ongoing, however, I don't think linode will give a promotion to someone based on their PayPal account.
The purpose of these types of promotions is to get people to use their services so they will eventually become paying customers. If it is not difficult to create multiple accounts, these types of promotions will be abused and will not convert into paying customers at the rate they might otherwise.
If you are looking to buy a VPS (to run a LN node) without providing credit card information, I might suggest one of many VPS providers that accept bitcoin as payment. Using bitcoin will not result in you getting free services, but it will allow you to protect your privacy. The site
lowendbox has many listings of VPS providers, including those that accept bitcoin.