I was a linux user for a while untill I accidently tripped upon FreeBSD, it was like Dootendooedoo wait whats this? But at that moment sadly, BSD hated my network card and it never worked right, soo I wrote it off for a while untill I got a computer that could actualy handle it with out any issues. The only thing since that I really have used any other OS for was games. Mostly because I have this shiney 64bit system, and be damned if I am going to switch back to 32bit just to get 3d acceleration...
But honestly the reason Linux took off and BSD hasnt is just simply advertiseing. Enough rabid loyal fans felt the need to show off their OS and how (when its running right but thats with every OS) its so awesome, cool, stable, free, and like unix, MR. IBM man give us money! Where as the BSD crowd seemed to be more focused on makeing a product that people want to use them selves and it tends to spread by more word of mouth than big flashy ads. Big flashy ads make viral things spread faster... they also make them appear larger than they are, thats how they attracted adobe to start makeing native stuff for them, Linux has native flash, a native flash compiler, and will soon have a native flex IDE. Why? Well mostly because they flaunt that they have a decent userbase, and they are growing exponetally, soon "our community is going to be HUEG!!!!!11111oneoneoneone". Companies can be controlled like people and led around by the nose ring, just dangle a little cheese and watch them bite
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