I don't attribute much of that progress to any particular entity. Things were coming along great, and then the volunteer base grew. Some of that came because of Ubuntu, some because of Android, heck, some because of MacOS, or because of GIMP being ported to Windows, or because of offices full of OpenOffice (or StarOffice)...
The wide presence and marketing success of your Ubuntus is all well and good, when it's good. Once the company uses its product for evil, the PR success turns into a retroactive Bad Thing. I don't know who contributed the firmwares for how many wifi adaptors, under the auspices of which payroll (if any) - but, I know I haven't heard about Wine or Codeweavers, or the Kernel team, or any other consumer-Linux-focused companies, selling my desktop computing details to Amazon, being vindictive and bullish in interproject relations, etc.
The exception, of course, being Google, which made "all the world's information" its core product since early days. There is a difference in the level of expectations for a cloud-slaved device like a mobile, vs a desktop OS, and there's definitely a difference in expectations letting Google cloud your control, vs installing a Linux OS yourself.
So, every time I see Shuttleworth jock his way through the ecosystem, because he can after hitting a position where millions of Linux users are too Steve-Jobs-fandom'd about a purple logo to care where anything came from or means, gets me on my rantbox, yes. One need only look at Oracle's attempted actions over the past few years, or the feeble way Red Hat can't seem to decide whose side they're on sometimes, to see what people with corporate personalities like Shuttleworth are good for in this space.
And, yeah, when I see Ubuntu users make arguments thanking some greedy, dishonest corporation for decades of hard work from the FOSS community, I get mouthy about that, too.
Linux would be a registered property owned by IBM or Microsoft as of 1998 if it weren't for harsh criticism and willingness to verbally slap over the central principles that protect its status. Some douchebag like Shuttleworth could commit a crime against his users, and then Congress will go and conflate all Linux users as "victims" of this heinous breach of privacy (or whatever hypothetical) - and we'd have both him, and his uncaring, ignorant users to thank for the loss of the free software movement.
Ignorance and blithe brain-branded "I have it so whoever gave it to me is right" bullshit are about the only thing free software has to fear. I like to game, but it's not as important as protecting the existence and reputation of the stack.
Anger flame depowering. Apologies to all for any insulting tones, but insert Picard, "the line must be drawn here," here.