I’ve done a long analysis of that incident on using the swiss cheese model, it boils down to:
There was a bugged version of steam.deb released that would throw an incompatibility with some weirder desktops, to include Pop!_OS’ kind of not quite Cosmic yet fork of Gnome. This incompatibility would have it uninstall the entire GUI. Including X11.
This bug was found and patched long before this. But, the bugged version just happened to be in the apt cache of the image of Pop!_OS that Linus installed.
Pop!_OS didn’t perform an apt update at any point during the onboarding cycle, or when launching the Pop!_Shop.
Linus went to install Steam, the Pop!_Shop saw that scary warning about uninstalling the GUI, and refused to do it.
Instead of googling “popos failed to install steam” and learning how to update before installing, Linus yelled at the camera about Linux requiring the terminal, googled how to install it from the terminal.
Most install instructions for Debian-based Linux tell you to apt update and apt upgrade before an apt install, but Linus seems to have only found the apt install instruction.
Possibly because Windows always says doing something can damage your computer, Linus ignored the warning and forced the install to continue.
APT happily uninstalled X11.
A lot of the fault falls on the design of Pop!_OS and how it handles the apt cache, that somehow neither the onboarding process nor launching the Pop!_Shop did it. Most of the time it’s mostly not a problem mostly. But one time it was a major problem, on international television. In the same episode, Luke installed Linux Mint, and showed it prompting him to install updates, which refreshes the apt cache and prevents problems like this.
Some of it does fall on Linus. Rather than attempting do diagnose and solve a problem, he threw a little bitch fit.
I’ve done a long analysis of that incident on using the swiss cheese model, it boils down to:
A lot of the fault falls on the design of Pop!_OS and how it handles the apt cache, that somehow neither the onboarding process nor launching the Pop!_Shop did it. Most of the time it’s mostly not a problem mostly. But one time it was a major problem, on international television. In the same episode, Luke installed Linux Mint, and showed it prompting him to install updates, which refreshes the apt cache and prevents problems like this.
Some of it does fall on Linus. Rather than attempting do diagnose and solve a problem, he threw a little bitch fit.