To be fair the "shortcomings" that spurred it on mainly were the Samba guys (or just one) reverse-engineering Bitkeeper causing the kernel free license getting pulled, which caused Linus to say "I can build my own with blackjack and pre-commit hooks" and then he did, addressing it toward his exact use case.

It gained tons of popularity mainly because of Linus being behind it; similar projects already existed when it was released.