For someone with an ancient undergrad math background and only "interested observer" level of machine learning knowledge, would it be better to do this course before tackling the deep learning one?
No, start with fast.ai's deep learning course. They have a top down approach so you start with connecting layers to solve deep learning problems and then dig down into the theory behind the thing.
If you want a bottom up approach, go look at Ng's coursera course.
Absolutely right. There's very little linear algebra required in deep learning. This Computational Linear Algebra course mainly covers decompositions, which aren't used much in deep learning.
