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Because it was the language of UNIX distributions (not called that, but it's the same concept).

They went hand in hand. I know lots of people that installed Linux in the 90s so they could use GCC.

well, unix was written in it, making it a natural choice if you're writing unix programs, or if you are writing programs on a unix.

And symbiotically, C was written to write unix.

edit: to note that by 'written' i mean designed and initially implemented.

If any of its competitors had had package managers as good as some of the modern ones, C would have lost.