An excellent summary. I think by the late 90s BSD could operate cleanly alongside Windows but by then Linux had become the default "free" *nix choice.

For me, I ran FreeBSD for about a year around 1999. I lasted about a week before breaking down and installing a GNU userspace. Excellent CLI ergonomics for the day.

Linux had quite a few "easy to install" distros where, if your critical hardware was fully supported, you had something that was easier to get up and running than Windows 95/98. X configurations and sound drivers were a sticking points back then though. BSD had no such "easy mode" gateway drugs.