I'm sorry, but blaming him for breaking his os because he didn't check for updates first is ridiculous. The difference is that in Windows, the entire os wouldn't break if you decided to install steam first. If it did, you would blame Microsoft. Same with MacOS.

It's not his fault. It was a bug in the os, which is the fault of the pop_os! developers. You also can't blame him if the command he used was wrong, because Linux users love giving terminal commands to people without explanation and refusal to explain how it could also be done via the UI if preferred.

You know what the better reaction would be? To criticise the developers for allowing a bug like that to make it into production. To explain to the user that it happened to that it's not their fault, it was a rare bug, and was super unfortunate. Offer them an explanation, maybe suggest other distros that are more polished, and help them with their Linux journey.

Blaming them for something that wasn't their fault isn't welcoming, isn't going to want to make them want to stay, and will make sure they think twice before trying again.

Not sure why you're upset that he didn't want to use Fedora? That's the beauty of Linux, there are plenty of distros. That's what sets Linux apart. Maybe you don't want to use Ubuntu because of it's layout, or a different distro because it's red and you like green. No matter the reason, who cares? Guess what? I've had more issues with Fedora than any other distro I've ever used. If you asked me, I'd say Linux Mint is the best ootb experience, and I'm sure someone else will tell me that Linux Mint fucked their wife and killed their cat and that I'm a stupid racist for thinking that.

Edit: also want to make it clear that windows and MacOS both have their own issues, some of which are really bad. No OS is perfect, and I think we should stop being weirdly defensive over a damn operating system. If one of them was leagues better, multiple OSes wouldn't exist.