[capableweb]

I can't find a source right now, but I remember reading about that Elon Musk tried to fight for Paypal to use Microsoft software instead of Linux when he became the CEO after the X.com merge. Since Paypal wanted to continue using Linux (who wouldn't?) they instead switched CEOs.

Edit

> I never heard that he didn’t pull his weight from Peter thiel or the others

I don't know. A letter of no-confidence to the board in order to replace Musk with Thiel doesn't exactly shine a lot of good light on Musk. From https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/02/why-elon-musk-says-taking-va...

> At the time, he was CEO of X.com, and company executives were not pleased with his leadership. While Musk was on the plane with Justine, executives delivered a letter of no-confidence to the company’s board, pushing Musk out as CEO, and replacing him with Peter Thiel.

[fastball]

As a big linux fan, Microsoft probably was the better choice 20 years ago.

[sschueller]

As a Linux and Microsoft user for more than 20 years and dealing with hosting 20 years ago, I can say Microsoft was absolutely not the better choice.

[capableweb]

2000 was the year of Windows 2000 and Windows ME. Did you ever use those in a professional capacity at the time? I think if you did, you wouldn't say you're a big Linux fan _and_ advice a company to use Windows. Or maybe we simply have different definitions of what a "fan" means.

[fastball]

I was more thinking in terms of what you could readily hire programmers for around that time. Definitely did not mean to imply that Windows was the actual better tech stack, just that for various business reasons going with Microsoft may well have been a better choice.

Though in regard to tech stacks, I also thought X.com might've been using .NET and (if that had been the case) then to my mind it was the better option, compared to what many people were using for scrappy Linux web backends in that era – PHP (which I say as someone who wrote his first web backend in PHP). But after looking up the timelines, I realize that this wasn't the case. Musk was replaced as CEO in 2000 and .NET was released in 2002.

[captn3m0]

This is also 20 years ago.

[capableweb]

How does that change the fact that the statement was "he didn’t pull his weight from Peter thiel" and it seems that he meaninglessly fought existing culture and also was ousted, which seems to indicate that he did in fact not pull his weight according to the board?