But I needed a Linux VM and somehow I couldn’t get the hypervisor to work with anything but BSD

Do you know about the linux-compat layer on FreeBSD? https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/linuxemu/

I also wish debian GNU/kfreeBSD was still a thing.

I just think a majority of people do not care about which OS they use, or even know what is an OS. The only way for GNU/Linux to become big is if companies start shipping it in computers instead of windows.

Linux is the second-most popular descendent of Unix, the first being OSX.

Linux is not really a descendant of Unix. It is a Unix clone, but its roots do not trace back to Unix.