In 1996 I began working at a very bootstrapped Internet Service Provider (ISP).  Some of you younger people might not even know what an ISP is - there used to be companies other than Verizon and AT&amp;T that you could get Internet access from.<p>Any how, aside from an NT server or two, and a Sun IPX box, our servers were generally Linux (Slackware and Debian) and FreeBSD.  Mostly FreeBSD.<p>FreeBSD had a lot going for it.  A lot going for it over Linux at the time, for our company.  Often we would get our hands on an x86 box of one type or another and have to make it into a server.  These boxes usually had no CDROM, and usually we installed network cards, which themselves were coming in randomly, on their bus (usually ISA, sometimes PCI).<p>To get the latest version of Slackware, we&#x27;d have to download all five of the Slackware base &quot;A&quot; disks.  Then the compiler was on the 10 &quot;D&quot; series of disks.  Then the 4 &quot;N&quot; disks would have networking.  Plus more if you want ghostscript (another set) or emacs (another set), or God help you, a workstation with X-windows running fvwm...<p>FreeBSD was two disks - boot and root.  Then you go into ports and install from there.  Because boot and root were enough to get your network card working - when Slackware and Debian often did not have those cards working at all.  Many a time I was going to install Linux, couldn&#x27;t get the network card working, put in the FreeBSD boot&#x2F;root disks, got the network card working with no problem, and the would-be Linux box became a FreeBSD box.<p>It was not just network cards - these two disks had a great system for not just recognizing all Ethernet cards and getting them to work, but being able to install a full-out system over a modem and 56k (or 28.8k, or 14k) baud POTS connection.  FreeBSD just made it real easy to install itself.<p>This was not just my opinion, others I knew thought the same thing.  Not until Ubuntu did I find a Linux system that worked to make installing it easy.  When wireless ethernet cards became more ubiquitous, I had left FreeBSD behind years before, but most Linuxes had trouble with every other card out there, even Ubuntu initially.  FreeBSD never seemed to have these problems, being able to install easily was something they prioritized - and I think it helped them.<p>Also, our Linuxes at the time were vulnerable to the &quot;ping of death&quot; and these sorts of security problems.  I still know companies which use FreeBSD.  They started years ago and never changed.<p>I&#x27;m not sure when and why Linux started overtaking FreeBSD.  Linux had this pre-GRUB boot loader called LILO which was horrible, but it did allow people with Windows boxes to be able to turn their desktop or laptop into a dual boot machine on which they could play around with Linux.  Linux was more advanced on the multi-boot front if I recall, and that was probably one of the reasons it got ahead.<p>Also another mentioned reason is commercialized BSD like BSDI was under a cloud of lawsuits in the early 1990s, whereas commercial Linux companies like Red Hat were free of all of this, and this served to help Linux as well.