FreeBSD and NetBSD were first released in 93, but I didn't hear about them until later. I don't think I would have been knowledgeable enough to install/use them back then, either.
I hadn't done any serious work with FreeBSD until earlier this year, when I set up my blog site on it. I wrote an article about that experience at https://jsilverfox.blog/post/freebsd/
The site is running well, I..just need to write more articles for it, eheh.
That would be an interesting timeline where open source BSD variants have all the hardware support and mindshare while Linux is an obscure project in the vein of Plan 9 or GNU Hurd..no idea how that would have played out.