Up front: I like Unix and Linux. But I think a big part of why Unix/Linux won is you could acquire them. 90% of life is showing up. In the bad old days you c

Up front: I like Unix and Linux. But I think a big part of why Unix/Linux won is you could acquire them. 90% of life is showing up. In the bad old days you could not buy machines or OS's. Until IBM got investigated for anti-trust you leased them with a huge service contract. You had to sign non-disclosures just to use the things. BSD/Unix was available and then became unavailable during the Unix wars, giving Linux an entry.