I was shown it in 79. I didn't "get it" I wound up using it in 81/82 and got it immediately. Between the gap period I'd moved from having the thinnest understanding of what programming was, to completing a CS degree and working in systems management and networking. Once you have had to use a pre-UNIX JCL such as a TOPS-10 system, moving to a unix system was a clear step up. The Dec 10 was a fine machine. It was just harder to sequence discrete units of code into an outcome. The pipe, and a reasonably programmatic shell and related tools were the killer app moment.

VMS was good, but it was still sys$system:[thing]/path arcane. And had complex database-like file abstractions which I am sure were a godsend to people in that space but IPC (using an abstraction called "mailboxes") was a nightmare. VMS had file versioning, something I think UNIX missed on. ZFS snapshots do much the same at a whole of FS level. UNIX still won, because it was more logically consistent, and had pipes. BSD4.2 brought sockets which I still hate, but they worked inside the consistency model.

v7 is where I learned to type. BSD4.1 is where I learned to develop. I still have a fond memory for the v7 pdp11.

unix 32V had deep roots in v7, as did the York unix port of v7 to the Vax with VM extensions. I think by then, BSD made it clear where things were going. System III -> System V were really aberrant, streams aside.

If Linux hadn't emerged, I think the BSD fracture would have led naturally to something dominant in FreeBSD or NetBSD or OpenBSD. But, they lost impetus to mind-share in the world of personal computers.