Anyone could have, like Apple, grabbed the BSD kernel, stripped it to a restricted hardware universe, and written a software suite in either 100% portable, or 100% machine language, code base...
They hired Jordan Hubbard who was a founder of the FreeBSD project. It wasn't long, six months or so when the crew started fucking things up. The primary problem was writing device drivers. The hardware wars were in full swing so graphic cards, bigger and faster drives and faster cpu's were in 6 mon cycle.
I made due from 1998 to 2007. I would occasionally buy something if it broke. It was amazingly fast even on dial up. The trick was to use the very old GUI twn x11r4. The default install was a screen, mouse x, and a couple of window boxes. You build the rest. The icons are crude bit-maps of tiny size. The colors can be custom mixed, then slider bars, fonts, and apls, added. This is so 20thC, but what it does is drastically reduce the amount of ram needed to get a window based system.
But the push of sound, images, and video which eat vast quantities of memory resources was just too much. I had a dual install with Win95 for the scanner, which once I got the image, I could store it and then reboot back to BSD and process the image in Gimp, thus avoiding the vastly overpriced photoshop. Layout was all TeX (via hand mark-up), later LaTeX which I destest.
Sure I could have stuck with it, if I wanted to retrain as an OS help tech or SA.
I broke down in self-loathing and despair and actually bought XP pro... I hated my weakness for weeks. My most favorite unix stuff was ported to XP: emacs (castrated) and LaTeX (also castrated). But they work. The main issue is that XP doesn't have a C++ complier so they port a preconfigured binary that's hard coded. It works but is not fully functional, i.e. no spell checker and multiple variants of LaTeX that don't follow the command structure.
Of course GNU has its own issues. Sure their apps are free, now just try to configure your directory system so their apps can locate the required libraries. This was the whole trip about BSD ports and the linex crowd and their version. It deteriorated into sectarian violence, just like Iraq.
I have sinned Father, please forgive me. I trespassed before Thee. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of our death.
CG