Who cares what software it runs, the interesting thing here is the memory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor. If they manage to bring this to market, it'll really turn around their reputation as a company that's lost its R&D roots and become just another clone manufacturer. That's the bigger strategic move here: creating product differentiation using technology your competitors don't have.
I care if it runs a Unix-like operating system. As an engineer, my life is made so much easier when standard Unix stuff is available. And I'm rather miserable when I have to rewrite something to account for the absence of standard Unix stuff.
For end-users, a Unix-like system can be perfectly usable. OS X runs on Darwin, which has slightly less Unix support than I'd prefer, but still waaaay more so than Windows. Ubuntu is, in my opinion, just as easy for the non-technical to learn as Windows or OS X.
Given the benefits to developers, and the absence of a downside for end-users, I see no reason not to root for Unix on The Machine.
Now, it doesn't have to use the Linux kernel, GNU utilities, or any of the other familiar building blocks. It just has to act like systems that do.
Memristor's aren't the only interesting thing--they also said it would use new optical interconnect techology, which would contribute much of the speed and energy efficiency improvements.
