I'd almost like to see the raw tape rather than the edited version of the episode where he nukes Xorg. I want to do an NTSB air crash investigation on it.

Linus installed Pop!_OS, got a working desktop, tried to install Steam via the Pop!_Shop, got an error message that says "Failed to install steam." He immediately goes on a rant about how Linux never works, you have to use the terminal.

Why did the Pop!_Shop fail to install Steam? It's just a front end for APT. Well, it turns out there was a bugged version of steam.deb, and not so much the software itself, but the metadata in the package was written in such a way that it thought it was incompatible with the Cosmic desktop, which was a rather new development at the time. So APT saw the package wanted to remove the entire GUI, and said "No we're not doing that" and failed with an error.

This was a known bug. And a fixed bug. At the time of recording, a newer version of the package with that bug fixed was available...but the apt cache that the image of Pop!_OS happened to have in the ISO pointed to the bugged version. And the Pop!_Shop doesn't do an apt-get update when launched, and it's very Apple-style not obvious in Pop!_OS as to how you do that. In the same episode, Luke installed Linux Mint which guided him through doing a software update. Pop!_OS doesn't.

Linus didn't google "popos failed to install steam" and learn to do an apt update and try again. Instead he goes on a rant about how nothing in Linux works and you have to use the terminal. Which he had to look up how to do. Most instructions I've seen will tell you to do an apt update before an apt install, but he either skimmed past that or found a source that didn't say to do that.

He then blitzed right past an allcaps warning that "THIS IS GOING TO BREAK THINGS. TO CONTINUE, TYPE YES DO AS I SAY." Windows constantly tells you that installing software might break the computer. Linux doesn't.

He gleefully told it to uninstall the entire GUI to include X11 and it dutifully dumped him to a terminal.

[–] Gladaed@feddit.org 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

A OS for everyone must just work. Such a bug is not acceptable. And just installingsteam is a basic use case that should work on any distro used for home PCs.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 days ago

On the one hand, I'm going to call bullshit. As if Windows has never thrown an error in its 40 year history.

On the other, the whole point of doing an analysis like this is to identify the links in the accident chain. Which are:

A weird bug related to APT's dependency metadata happeend in the steam .deb package. This bug specifically effected Pop!_OS because their Cosmic desktop, still pretty much a fork of Gnome, was so new that dependency info got written wrong. Most of the Linux ecosystem was not effected, only Pop!_OS users using the Cosmic desktop.
This bug was discovered, and fixed via issuing an updated package with the dependency data corrected. BUT, the version of the apt cache that was included in the ISO that Linus downloaded just happened to still point to the bugged version.
At no point during the install or user onboarding process does Pop!_OS walk the user through the process of a software update. It also does not seem to perform an apt update on launching or searching the Pop!_Shop. I believe it is/was configured to do that on a timed basis, and was trusting that...perhaps a little too much.
Linus tries to install Steam while on his period and he doesn't handle an error message particularly well. He turns to using the terminal without really knowing what he was doing and ignores all warnings. On camera.

The design of the Pop!_Shop and over-trusting scheduled updates allowed the bugged package to slip through the cracks. Note this happened minutes after the install of the OS before any scheduled update had happened. Because no one installs software immediately after first boot, right? To their credit, the automated system saw the incompatibility and just errored out. So here comes Linus with the steel chair.

This is why I'm kind of cold on recommending trendy new distros to new users. Let's very very slightly fork a DE for very petty reasons just enough to cause dependency problems, or let's re-implement a package manager front end because we want a grid not columns so we'll redo the whole thing and it'll be fine.

At the time, Pop!_OS was the big "it solves this one little problem, so point all newbies at it" distro because they shipped a separate ISO for Nvidia equipped platforms. Problem is, other than that it's just janked up Ubuntu Gnome.

No no! Use Bazzite. No no use Peppermint. No no, use Elementary. No no, use Endeavour. No no, use Nobara. This quarter the one all the newbies are bing told to use CachyOS. Get ready to never hear about CachyOS after 15 months from now.