Wouldn't call the issue on article major (edit: and it's more of GNOME than Ubuntu issue). Installing Steam removing the desktop environment on the other hand...
It's hard to say where fault lies exactly in terms of the bug itself. Except it's up to the distro maintainer to decide what software they include, test it, and ensure it works as expected along with the other pieces of software they decided to include. I don't know kernel stuff particularly well so maybe this is wrong, but presumably a GUI application, that lets you control other aspects of the OS, not working with the kernels own performance settings seems egregious if not also serious or "major".
I'm guessing you're referring to LinusTechTips video, where is he would have actually read what was written in the terminal, he could have avoided all this...
But I do think that as long as users have to enter the terminal, the experience won't be very user friendly.
