Why does FreeBSD get all the attention?
To really understand what's going on with the various BSDs, it's helps to clarify what the difference between a "distribution" and a "variant" is. There's no strict definition of either, and some use them semi-interchangibly, a distro is a downstream branch of a system, while a variant is a fully independent fork.
With Linux, we almost exclusively talk about distributions build from the Linux kernel, as maintained by Linux Torvalds and the Linux Foundation, and typically, the GNU userland libraries and tools. Because these projects don't, ultimately, maintain their own kernel, or userland systems, even if do manage local forks of those systems, they aren't fully independent of the original projects they draw from. This is what makes them distributions.
However, outside of the Linux world, things tend to work a bit differently. Both UNIX, as a whole, and many individual forks of UNIX have branched out into complete OSs, which are maintained independently of one another. These independent forks are known as variants.
FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and DragonflyBSD, are all variants of the BSD family, branched, in some way or another, from Net/2 BSD, and 4.4BSD-Lite which removed the remaining AT&T code, out of copyright concerns, making modern BSD variants the Unix of Theseus. However, despite sharing that root, and often sharing changes between one another, they are completely independent project, with their own goals and directions, maintaining a complete and unique version of the BSD operating system, each with it's own unique and subtle differences from the others.
FreeBSD just happened to be in the right position, with the right people in charge. They've managed to build a BSD variant with features similar to other contemporary OSs. They have excellent driver support, and support for third party software (Did you know they have their own port of NVIDIA's proprietary driver, and have for years?). They're even continuing to work on binary compatibility with Linux, so that they can offer a fully-compatible, alternate platform. There are even distributions of FreeBSD trying to offer complete desktop-ready systems, though they're not especially mature.
I can't say I've ever used it, but it seems to be a NetBSD distribution, like GhostBSD is to FreeBSD, which is a rather curious decision.
Why are there still projects for "user friendly BSD"?
Part of it is that diversity is good, and making a diverse ecosystem as widely, and easily, available as possible means that diversity has a better chance to continue. No one chooses a system they can't figure out, but if you hand someone a ready-to-go system and get them to decide that this strange other system they didn't even know about meets their needs just as well, or better, than other existing options, that's more reason for others to support that as an option.
It also just makes life easier for all those involved. While some might enjoy manually installing and tweaking everything themselves, every time they do a fresh install, sometimes you just want to press a few buttons, and have a working desktop.
Was there ever an enterprise BSD?
While there aren't (to my knowledge) any modern, general purpose commercial BSD distributions/variants, there are some special purpose distributions that have become commercial projects, like pfsense, and TrueNAS, prior to it's change to Debian Linux.
Additionally, some proprietary system's like the OS for current PlayStation consoles (starting with the PS3), are (or appear to be) based on modern BSD variants, like FreeBSD and NetBSD.
How was the mood for BSD users when Linux was taking off?
For this one, if you want a definitive answer, your best bet would likely be to approach the various communities directly, and see if you can get some comment from some of their more senior members.
I can only speculate, but I imagine there were a lot of mixed feelings about both past, and current situations. Seeing as many of the BSDs we know today grew directly alongside Linux, I doubt anyone could have predicted how things turned out.
What's the relationship between BSD, Illumos, and Linux?
There's not a clean, direct relationship between them. It's more a matter of history.
I've already mentioned a bit about the history of modern BSD, but the BSD family itself dates all the way back to Bell Lab's Research UNIX, version 6(ish). Because AT&T was forbidden from marketing their own OS, do to the contract they signed when they were working on Multics, they instead licensed the source. The CSRG at UC Berkeley bought a source license, and created their own, heavily modified UNIX variant, which they also redistributed as the Berkeley Software Distribution, and become one of the earliest major variants. It's one of the oldest branches of the UNIX family of operating systems. Because it's so old, many of the features we're so familiar with today got their start on the BSD fork of UNIX, particularly features related to networking and sockets.
Illumos is what's left of OpenSolaris, after Oracle acquired Sun Micro, and closed the Solaris source code again. The remains of the project were picked up by community volunteers, and forked into Illumos, and a few distributions of it, like OpenIndiana.
Solaris itself is also still very much available, for free, though you do have to agree to Oracle's draconian license terms. If you want to play with a (relatively) modern System V Unix variant, either Solaris, or an Illumos distribution might be a good choice. Like BSD, both Illumos, and Solaris, have a direct lineage to true UNIX. Likely more so than modern BSD!
Linux, unlike the others, isn't a true UNIX system. Instead, it was built, from scratch, with the intention of being Unix-like. It has no direct link to any of the true UNIX families, and does not contain any meaningful UNIX source. It was started as a hobby kernel project by Linus Torvalds, as a reaction to the lack of affordable Unix-like options on desktop systems of the time (modern BSD variants wouldn't become available until a few years after he'd started the project), and eventually got help from GNU to help create a complete OS, as their Mach-based Hurd microkernel was taking too long to get off the ground.
I'd like to give Minix an honorable mention here, as it helped to inspire Linux, as the only real affordable Unix-like system available to anyone at the time. However, it was never intended as a complete OS, but rather, as an educational tool for teaching OS design principles. The source code and license for the OS originally came with Tanenbaum's book Operating Systems: Design and Implementation.
In the BSD community, what was the general consensus about GNU Hurd and Minix?
Again, you might want to ask them this directly, but Hurd, at least, does have a more meaningful link. Minix, as mentioned above, was never intended as a competitor, so I doubt they really though much about it.
When picking the GNU kernel, the choice was split between a 4.4BSD-Lite-based kernel, and the MIT Mach research kernel. Ultimately, there has been mention of regret about the decision to choose Mach over BSD, as it severely slowed the project's development, and is likely the main reason the Linux kernel was able to take over. Ultimately, I don't think Hurd ever became relevant enough to have widespread consideration. However, it's worth mentioning that Mach itself has a direct relation to BSD. It got its start when some researchers at Carnegie Mellon University decided to implement a microkernel architecture by slowly stripping a BSD kernel down, and replacing it's components with userland services until, effectively, all BSD kernel code had been removed.
GNU also isn't the only OS to use a Mach kernel. Despite misconceptions that macOS is based on FreeBSD, it's actually based on Apple's own XNU Mach implementation, along with their Darwin toolchain. It does borrow some code from FreeBSD, but to say that they're directly related would be inappropriate.
What was the reaction to systemd's introduction?
I have a lot of personal opinions regarding systemd. I think it's a good idea that was taken too far, and I doubt I'm the only one who thinks that.
When it was initially introduced, it wasn't nearly as big of a deal as it is today, so I very much doubt that anyone knew what would become of it. It's design is similar to macOS's launchd, which I have no doubt lead to mixed opinions, even at the time.
Personally, I don't think systemd, as an init service, deserves the level of vitriol that it often sees. But, it's not really the init service alone that's the issue.
Sorry it took so long. It's a lot of information, and I always try to fact-check myself, as much as possible.
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