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Linus vs Linus
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this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2025
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Yes, they recently shot a video together.
Wow. I have a bit more respect for one than the other. The dweeb made a video where he pretended to try Linux and botched it on purpose
Not on purpose in the way you are suggesting... he tried it all on his own in earnest, but made a dumb mistake not reading the prompt carefully enough or trying to understand it. But, he only got into that situation because of an error on Pop OS! maintainers' part. It was an unknown issue at the time until he uncovered it. OCAU thread that discussed the issue at the time
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.
What's notable though is Linus' experience is likely to be very typical of an average non-technical Windows user's experience when it comes to dealing with problems.
To seemingly lose the ability to read when an error occurs and then just try and slam it through regardless instead of pumping the brakes and asking for help is all too common.
I'm on year 5 of fully committed to Linux everything (minus work) and I still assume "oh yeah I can probably just sudo force the thing I want. Reading logs takes too long" and yeah it bites me in the ass sometimes.
Its weird to hold Linus (Tech Tips) to such a high standard for no other reason than he makes tech YouTube videos.
I'm a fucking sys admin and I make the same mistakes. Its human. I'm glad he's at least making Linux seem accessible while also bringing to light the realities of how different the troubleshooting strat is from Windows to Linux.
I do think Linus should be held to a higher standard than the average joe, but yeah. IMO he should have done his due diligence to do things right. It was just very low effort for a guy whose professional life revolves around tech.
Some people go way too far with lambasting him though.
I have to disagree, the point of the video was to try how Linux was for someone to switch over to. People engage with Linux like that and pop os changed the error bypass command as a result. It was a net positive for desktop Linux.
Now ltt as a whole? Yeah, no. Reviewing coolers on the wrong GPU, auctioning off prototypes instead of returning them, recommending people use insecure windows debloaters, etc. is completely unacceptable.
This was really interesting to read.
I don't get your logic. Why would he do it on purpose? He's been advocating for and promoting Linux gaming for years now, why would he fail on purpose.
Honestly, what happened seems like something pretty normal for someone that isn't a programmer or system admin. I remember when consoles were black boxes to me and I wouldn't understand anything that was written in there even though today it might seem extremely obvious. It was just bad luck that his attempt lined up with a Pop!_OS bug, he didn't expect that such a normal use case as installing Steam would result in him deleting his desktop environment, and just saw the last line and did what it said.
I haven't seen any evidence of that.
I don't agree at all that the average user would read that warning and proceed. I have seen many people freeze up and cancel upon seeing messages nowhere near that level just because they didn't understand. That was maybe the scariest warning I've seen. It explicitly said it probably would break the system. I always find it odd when people act like it's normal behavior to proceed in that situation.
He talks about wanting Linux to succed and win marketshare over Windows on many WAN shows, and in general, he is positive towards Linux in the sense that he wants it to win, but he also feelt like it wasn't ready yet for real mass adoption. For example, he's rooting for Valve and the SteamDeck and Steam machine to be a success and has been widely positive of Proton and what it has managed to achieve. Perhaps you want him to make videos about Linux, in which case, yes, he hasn't made that many dedicated videos on it, but on streams he is often positive whenever talking about it.
Also, why are people defending the scumbag for any reason? He was caught manipulating benchmarks after getting paid by a hardware company (forget which company, easy to Google this)
If this is based on the GamersNexus videos, those are pretty absurd hit pieces that seemed to come from some bizarre place of resentment. They've had process issues when it comes to how they benchmark hardware, but never anything paid or purposefully misleading.
I'm honestly wondering if you've confused it with something else.
If that's the case, could you link a source then? Because I wasn't able to find it with a quick Google search He has been the subject of many controversies over the years, most of which have been wildly misinterpreted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGW3TPytTjc
This is basically a hit piece that has been in many ways disproven. Linus and his team are a bunch of apes but that means they are mostly incompetent, not actually malicious.
On purpose, or on stupid? Answers prompt with "I know what I am doing", breaks system, complains.
…while being forced to do so to achieve a basic thing, and after finding it as the solution on the web (because it usually is). Remember, Pop!_OS screwed up so badly that the installation of a common user program caused the removal of core system packages. While it's correct to expect people to read warnings, expecting beginners and common users to either learn about the (very complex) inner workings of an operating system just to install something or to let go of their entire gaming library is unreasonable. And although Linus of course should have an interest in learning these things given his work and should've taken more care, the video was specifically to showcase how their experience as new users look like. And Pop!_OS was generally regarded as user-friendly, not as solely aimed at professionals (important detail).
If the only solution to a problem with a very common task on a user-friendly OS is hidden behind an advanced-level skill wall (yes, knowing all the important packages if your OS means you're an advanced user) that may kill you if you do a single wrong action then your system offers shitty solutions.
Fortunately both user-friendly distros and aspects of them like Flatpak have gone way further since then, so this shouldn't happen as easily anymore. The warnings in apt are way more noticeable now too I think. The Linux community learned from all the bad press… most of it at least.
He explained he was trying to approach it as an average user. But that seems disengenous to me. That warning was scary as fuck. Anyone stupid enough to go far out of their way to break their system against very strong warnings, gets what they get. The average users I know wouldn't have done that unless they were pretty much done trying and didn't care if it broke their system anyhow
Windows says shit like "This may harm your computer" for just about anything, especially installing software. Windows users are trained to ignore warnings like that, warnings in Linux are serious.
On the other hand, yes. Reading what is on a computer screen is beyond 117.9% of the population.
Link?
I was more hoping for the "Well Excuuuuuseee me, Princess" Link, but I'll take it.
This one?
Well excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse me Princess
CD-i Link has entered the chat…
Not out yet: http://youtube.com/post/UgkxJH41xfgExAQbc1ej3AkWVqSVjeR93WFf