I am not really that surprised - people generally do only a small set of tasks on a computer, and many of those are really "using a web browser", which actually makes it easier to support them with Linux (or any other OS...) than it was a decade ago.
The problem is power users with some specific needs, who also tend to be the more vocal in tech circles. In that circumstance, the usability of Linux depends strongly on what kind of needs they are - programming is obviously not a problem, but it's a harder sell for, say, photography (I like Darktable, but I have found it v hard to sell Lightroom users on it).