The thing is though, back then in the early 90s FreeBSD could have been good enough; most x86 computers didn't have a GUI at all, and if they did it was OS/2 or Windows over DOS. Hardware was arguably much simpler too. Linux was created as a response to Minix, not BSD[1], and Minix was just a "teaching" OS, not a daily driving workstation OS. He didn't initally build Linux for "daily use", but as a hobby project, per his own words.

[1] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.os.minix/dlNtH7RR...