Yeah! Some time ago I saw in a taco bell screen an Ubuntu boot screen, looked like something where wrong on the booting process, but was fascinated to see that the drive through screen was on Linux…
I wouldn’t have chosen Ubuntu for that… but that’s just me :-)
Ubuntu is actually a fantastic choice for those sorts of applications. Develop against the latest LTS (or the one in development if it will be released before your finished product is) and you'll have support for years.