The Linux&#x2F;Apache&#x2F;MySQL&#x2F;PHP stack was the hotness about a decade ago, so that&#x27;s the kind of hosting that was most available.  Shared hosting was much more popular (physical hosting was more expensive, VMs were expensive and new, and tooling was worse).<p>In 2025 someone might ask why $oldStack developers don&#x27;t always do $newHotness.  It&#x27;s often the timing of popularity that tools grow together.<p>This is just apocrypha, but MySQL was popular during the rise of PHP because MySQL was more performant on small databases on developer workstations.