In the show Richard is billed as a compression guru - his startup is trying to market an impressive compression algorithm he developed.
His justification for tabs over spaces in the show was they require less bytes.
But the point of the scene was to highlight the sometimes pointless quibbling that programmers can engage in, and how far it can go.
Is Linus Torvalds rant pointless? I'm not informed enough to risk an opinion but I doubt the personal attacks, belittling and swearing are helping his case.