The article is on the US statistic though. If it was a global statistic it wouldn't surprise me at all.

When it comes to laptops, we have a lot of MacBooks out there, and an endless Sea of $400 low quality Lenovos and HPs eternally marching to the garbage bins.

Ultimately my observation is just anecdotal, but I have built a lot of computers for people worked on a lot of family PCS, etc, and have never once worked with a Linux system in that context in 25 years of doing that stuff. I'm not interacting with a tech oriented crowd though (obviously those people would be chatting about tech instead and I would never be touching their system). Perhaps the tech oriented crowd is big enough to hit 5%, or perhaps Linux gaming is moving the needle, but I can't imagine 1 in 20 system is Linux in the US. I just can't.

FWIW, statcounter is showing 5.49% for Germany - which seems more plausible to me than 5% for the US, but whatever.

20 years ago my kids were getting hand-me-down work laptops with Linux installed on them. Apart from their peers thinking that they must be in some kind of cult, it did the job of keeping them much safer from malware.

Linux has been very usable for a long time. Windows 11, being deliberately unusable on older hardware that works perfectly well is enough incentive for more people to try an alternative. That's not going to move the needle in corporate IT but it's enough for a couple percentage points of the installed base.