By reading the message and using basic comprehension. If you don't know what something is in an error message then google it!

Far be it from me to defend "I did what the internet told me to do!" but nothing in sudo apt-get install steam would lead you to believe you were about to nuke core system packages. That was a big fuckup for PopOS.

There's also no reason to believe that apt update would be a preemptive solution to that problem, when it hadn't even been reported to PopOS yet. Let alone expect newcomers to Linux, who are just following widely available tutorials, to know that command and what it does.

Yes. People have been trained to ignore warnings like this.

Android makes you jump through a hoop and tries to scare you when you want to install apps from outside the playstore.

Windows has some similarly serious-sounding warning messages.

People have got used to rolling their eyes at warnings when installing software. Like it or not, that's the way that it is. Users are used to seeing a scary warning when installing, and they're used to just powering through it without much thought.

Linus was following a tutorial on the PopOS website, followed the instructions, and borked his install.

I have problems with LTT in general, but the PopOS thing was entirely understandable, and people pretending that wasn't a usability problem in PopOS are delusional.

I agree with that other reply.

Linus knew just enough to be dangerous.

My experience with most Windows users and their first encounter with using a Linux terminal is every single warning/error they see no matter how mundane is a big deal.

Things like the boot text or a random apt install on Linux will often display various warnings or even "errors" that are really of no concern but ime tend to freak out new users.

Linus is in that narrow band where he doesn't really know shit but knows just enough to be falsely confident and ignore all the warnings/errors instead of just the irrelevant ones

He's at the bottom end of 'knows just enough to be dangerous', and people make fun of people in that range. The vast majority of gamers and Windows users fall well outside that narrow band. The average Windows user who is scared of the terminal wouldn't ignore several warnings and type in confirmation phrases. They wouldn't have even gotten to that point because to get there you need to copy/paste things from a website without understanding what it does.