Wendel from Level1Techs helped GamerNexus set up Bazzite for their Linux benchmarking, and unlike most tech youtubers Wendel actually knows what he's doing. If it was truly an awful choice for a Linux newbie, he probably would have pushed harder for his personal favourite (Fedora) or an established just works distro (Mint).
As he explains at 7:05. He knows he could easily do this, but the average user isn't going to have that kind of expertise on call like Linus and co, do.
I genuinely wonder if he's refusing to try Mint because then he could no longer make videos searching for the perfect beginner OS, or if he's genuinely stuck in an echo chamber that prevents him from considering it.
It's because he's outside of the echo chamber. If you're not immersed in Linux 24/7, this is the typical user experience. Ask for where to start, get a bunch of answers, follow the advice of one and get 5x the amount of people shouting at you that you made the wrong choice. Only to then turn around a week later and say that rabid Linux autists never shout at newbies.
i am glad luke and thing 3 are not going the linus route
It's funny that comments all love Luke. He chose the "right" distros (mint, arch, and cachy), he has the "right" attitude (even though he mentions how he was yelled at for choosing mint in the previous challenge). But they still have an issue with him choosing grub during install.
you have to work hard to install any prominent distribution and have it not work out of the box.
Which is why they show, repeatedly, that he's not doing anything stupid or outlandish.
Install OS, install Steam, install Discord. Sound issue that fixes itself once he opens a YouTube video.
Install Left 4 Dead 2. Launch Left 4 Dead 2. Hard crash.
Install Helldivers 2. Launch Helldivers 2. Mouse and keyboard stop working.
All the while Steam keeps opening weird black windows.
He wasn't putting in obscure terminal commands and fiddling with settings he shouldn't. He was just using the distro he was recommended online, in a way that seems fairly normal.
I already mentioned the excuse from comments and react videos is that he got PopOS at a bad time, and if he just waits a while (ranging from years to months) all of these issues would be gone, as if that's an acceptable answer.