He seems to be three years older than me, so I can actually answer this with a fair amount of experience. I started in '88, with Linux v1.0 following within the next six years.
It's a different industry in a different World.
Honestly, as a compliment to Linus, misreading people is only possible when they aren't transparent enough (or willing to adapt.) I, on the other hand, am quite the opposite - I'm way too honest and foolishly expect an honest answer in return... which leads to the question, "How's that been working out for you, fella?" How that translates to someone not willing to accept being corrected, or falsifying their experience to play the role they've been given, is never positive or proactive.
No matter who we are or where we're from, there has been an overall degradation of how humans communicate as a whole. In fact, I would even dare to say that the current generations (along with the ones that will follow) have not been lead properly, thus validating their disrespect when it comes to the reaction they may have when being lead by someone who may know a more effective way of doing things.
But, then... there's a much higher level of aggravation and disappointment when it comes to modern day development and design. Unless you've been around for a while, you may not see what's blatantly obvious - the process I've come to call, "Stick and Move".
Development, especially, is a victim of that. Too many libraries and frameworks are spelling disaster for an industry that use to be about "finding the problem, and applying a solution" - which, should only be done with the underlying language and not something built on top of it.
Many of our current issues are caused by something trendy, placed on top of something fundamental. Almost like someone cursing at a screen because their code should work, and it isn't - the blame gets thrown at the language, and not their inability to write it correctly. However, now there are many more things that could go wrong these days, and way too much time needed to invest in educating yourself properly, considering that the EoL for most frameworks these days are five to eight years, and it takes approximately that same amount of time to become fully proficient. Even if they continue to exist, those libraries, frameworks and tools - along with the people who supported them - have become victims of the "Stick and Move" mentality.
You've stuck with something, built part of your skill set off it, and now need to move away from it. Rinse. Repeat.
Having to deal with this on a daily basis makes you want to slap the stupidity out of people... but the realization that most senior developers and designers will eventually have, is that they're actually using something that works, but antiquated in it's approach, even if it's much more productive and effective.
And, there's the catch... that's no longer the way things are done. From Waterfall to Agile. From SVN to Git. From Vanilla JS to a JS framework that requires processing it's own flavor of tools that exists solely for the purpose of calling proprietary products "open source".
Again, it's a different industry in a different World. And, I'm glad that Linus - as a pioneer and even a role-model for some - is admitting his mistakes publicly and letting all the younger folks know that there's a benefit in admitting you're wrong... and that it's not the code's fault. It's about unselfishly, "finding the problem, and applying a solution" on both a personal and professional level.