A wheel not in need of reinvention
XMBC and it's derivatives - openELEC, Boxee et al are already well all over linux-on-the-telly. I can share painlessly to and from my XBMC-running media centre using existing protocols like UPnP and DLNA and so on - not just devices running Ubuntu. Remote control is achieved for me with a wiimote and bluetooth - but I could easily use my phone or a web browser or an iDevice. I'm sure someone could port OpenKinect's output to being XMBC friendly, it's hardly difficult as XBMC is so well put together.
Even the drooling fanboists at omgubuntu barely got excited over this latest Shuttleworth announcement.
Full disclosure: I've used Ubuntu on and off since it launched, and today 50% of my computers run Ubuntu - including the media centre - the rest are on Debian.