Oh does he do it like chess engines where it seems like playing at a low level is still playing with an almost prefect engine, only it adds random "inaccuracies" that are mistakes no human would ever make, like suddenly hanging their queen with no actual intent behind the move other then being a random mistake?

Like "oh, a average user would have made a mistake by now, so let's remove an important directory to simulate that"?

You're right. Linus isn't an ordinary user, and still he experiences trouble.