It was extremely unfortunate timing. Pop_OS! had a bug for that week (or a few days?) where installing Steam would IIRC try to install the wrong version with the wrong dependencies. To support these alternate dependencies, it had to uninstall a bunch of the defaults, thus breaking the system. You can probably find a much better explanation by searching it up, Steam Pop_OS! i386 or whatever, but that’s the jist. It was a crazy blip that Linus managed to be in the way of.
Not Linux’s fault, not normal, but in my opinion not entirely Linus’ fault either as who expects their desktop to be bricked by installing an everyday program?