One of the Linux challenge videos. Either part 1 or 2.
The Linux community loves hating on Linus for this, but honestly, it was a bug that popos has now fixed, and the video genuinely shows how difficult Linux can be for the average user.
This exact thing actually was user error. I mean, I like my people Linus, Luke, Emily and the others like every other average tech person... But when Steam is the absolute first thing you go for after installing your OS, then, sorry, but then you have only yourself to blame. It wouldn't have happened if he checked for updates first. And, lets be real, you would do in Windows too. I mean, dunno how it's nowadays, as Win7 was my last Windows... but back then I just downloaded the most recent Win7UpdatePack from winfuture.de and slapped that on it. First thing I do after Windows installation since WinXP. Because just throwing their UpdatePack at it is WAY faster than using Windows own updater... BY HOURS!!
Personally I don't like Ubuntu based distros. Their updaters always break for me. Sooner or later it fails to update because an installed package is more up2date than expected. ...A weird issue I never had on Fedora. Linus didn't want to give Fedora a try. He didn't say why. And later he said it wasn't because of the neckbeard memes. So what's his issue anyway? Nobody knows... Aside from Yvonne maybe.
It's through the package manager of your distro, apt, pacman, dnf... It has the best integration with the system and other apps installed though the package manager (if there is a gui on your distro, it is the same thing, tho some allow to chose between different sources.
The flatpak version it may also be viable.
Deb is a very bad idea as you wont have the dependencies installed automatically.
Linus was just stupid and did not update pop os after install.
Tho he could have updated it and maybe when he did the recording the issues was discovered but not yet fixed. But The issue was already well fixed when he posted the video.
I don't remember how all went.
He installed the OS, opened the default software center, and installed a package.
There's simply no way to justify what happened. I challenge you to find any situation in which installing a package from the Microsoft Store would uninstall critical system packages and also kill the entire GUI.