Who cares about the year of the Linux desktop when the world is still turning into 1984? There was a reason we wanted Linux to dominate and it wasn't so it would end like this.
Arguably. It's hard to say Linux won on technical merits of networking compared to FreeBSD or OpenBSD, or on storage compared to FreeBSD+ZFS, or say that generally when devs chose MacOS X.
I suggest Linux won for being: the most popular out of the things which cost $0.
BSD lost for not being popular, commercial Unix, Windows and MacOS lost for costing money.
People used to say that BSD lost because of the ambiguous copyright status of the early 90s, allowing Linux to glide in unopposed as the "free unix-like os for PCs".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc.....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Software_Distribution...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better
Also the first versions of the kernel was released at the right time.
It is decent enough, free, open source and was around at the right time. The internet was just becoming a thing, the PC ecosystem had "won" and it was pretty open in that anyone could manufacture a PC. There was an AT&T lawsuit wasn't happening in the 90s IIRC against the BSD Code. If Linus had created his kernel a little later or a litter earlier than it may have never received the interest it did.