There is a tradeoff between UX, user liberty, and user privacy. Traditionally, Linux is leaning heavily towards liberty. However now there are systems have locked down core system (like chrome os or mac os), so it is impossible to mess things up. Yet user might complain that they “cannot do anything”.
As for telemetry, privacy is a fundamental pillar of human right. I admire FOSS communities’ stance on privacy by default, and I don’t think they should change that. Although now opt-in privacy preserving telemetry is slowly getting implemented in Linux, I think it is a good thing, but needs still be treated carefully. Privacy-preserving telemetry is good, but it is notoriously hard to guarantee such correctness.
Finally, I think the bug Linus encountered is extremely rare. The flatpak install script is broken, and the apt install removes DE. I don’t think there are any documented incident of both installation methods to have such critical failure. It is even more unfortunate that it happens just as the most popular tech youtuber decides to try Linux.