That's very much the case.

Of course, about the same time that Windows 3.x and BSD were hitting the PC market, Linux was as well. Frankly, I'm happy that such a vibrant and open development community has grown around it, and if it wasn't for the advantageous characteristics of Linux (such as very efficient and effective hardware polling during install and boot), we'd probably not have the open source community that now exists. If Sun dominated the 386 market as they could have, Sun would be what Microsoft now is instead, but there likely wouldn't have been the same challenge.

On the other hand, BSD might have filled the void left by the absence of a Linux if Sun had grabbed the corporate top-dog spot, because BSD would have become easier to stomach for pointy-haired bosses if the major player on the PC was another unix instead of Windows.