It was definitely like that. One landmark that comes to mind is the Microsoft "Halloween documents" attempting to slow the rise of open source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents Microsoft also advertised NT and IIS as being faster than Linux (implicitly admitting that Linux was worth considering) which motivated a lot of back-and-forth "benchmaxing". http://www.mindcraft.com/whitepapers/first-nts4rhlinux.html https://www.kegel.com/nt-linux-benchmarks.html

Sun was also a huge loser to open source and x86 but instead of fighting it their CEO Jonathan Schwartz embraced it. In retrospect this "Glasnost" approach didn't help Sun survive. I remember the Sun fans used to complain that Linux/x86 was winning in benchmarks but Sun was worth paying N times more (of your employer's money) because it just felt faster and more robust. Parallels to today are left as an exercise for the reader.