For those of us watching from the Unix world while Microsoft fumbled its way towards world domination, it was an incredibly frustrating time to see the banality of their technology become 'the thing' in light of so many, many, forgotten and ignored mysteries. It was something like what it might be like to see a new religion form for your children while watching that of your parents die.
Thank Linus we still have an alternative to Microsoft, here and now! It is absolutely a huge gain for us that Unix was not eradicated by the feral, vermin new thing.
Oh but there was VMS and Lisp and others that are gone, with all the ideas. All replaced by the Unix way. The Unix way is gone, too. Linus should be given some credit for that as well.
BSD has existed long before Linux was even a vague idea in someone's head, and the free software BSDs were already springing up independently of Linux, though it took until 1992 for 386BSD to be released. Patchkits soon followed with FreeBSD and NetBSD popping up quickly.
Linux or not, it would have happened. The difference is that if the lawsuits didn't encumber the community and create uncertainty, it could have been the dominant Unix-like today.
I have no idea what the hell you mean by "Linux making the idea popular to culture".
I've been there and aware of the situation since the beginning. BSD may have been 'before Linux', but it wasn't the best-promoted set of the group of Unix OS's .. it was always easier to get Linux than BSD. If Linux wasn't doing all the stupid shit that made people re-consider Unix as a personal operating system, I don't think it the idea of Unix on the desktop would have gained as much traction.
Anyway, this is all "what if" line of thought .. just my opinion. But I've been a Linux user since the days of the minix-list, and a user of Unix-based systems since 1980.
Thank Linus we still have an alternative to Microsoft, here and now! It is absolutely a huge gain for us that Unix was not eradicated by the feral, vermin new thing.