This is interesting - a Linux distro that really differentiates itself technically, instead of just having a different GUI / desktop environment.

Yeah, first I thought this is just a BeOS-inspired GUI theme, but there is more to it:

    Nexus is Vitruvian's custom Linux kernel subsystem that brings BeOS-style
    node monitoring, device tracking, and messaging to Linux — making it
    possible to run Haiku applications on a standard Linux kernel.