[Fnoord]

XMMS supported ALSA via a plugin. XMMS was dead anyway, at that point (when ALSA arrived). It had a GTK1 interface, for example, and barely got updates. At some point, the plugin ecosystem was more alive than XMMS itself, and they extended the software a lot (think of it like Sublime Text's plugin system, or Winamp's). XMMS2 took way too long to arrive. In the meantime, better iTunes-like audio players were released, such as the ones default in GNOME and KDE.

The post also fails to mention JACK, a low latency audio server for Linux. Which is now replaced by PipeWire. JACK was programmed by the same person as Ardour, called Paul Davis. You might've seen him around here. He's been doing using Linux audio professionally for a while.

There was also a Linux live distribution aimed for being used as a Linux audio workstation, called dyne:bolic.

FreeBSD was and is a niche, not the reason why Linux wasn't used much for professional audio work.

The ALSA debacle was a short lasting transition period (eventually ALSA even got OSS emulation).

The reason why Linux wasn't used much for professional audio work goes to Apple. macOS is just easier to use than any Linux distribution, so it got the momentum in that scene (and in the artistic scene in general). The rest is history.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyne:bolic