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You joke, but the Contiki operating system, which is now marketed as a modern OS for the Internet of Things, started out as a multitasking, networked operating system for the Commodore 64 and other 6502-based systems. They seem to have scrubbed almost all references to that off their web site, though.

Nothing as far as a distro (or desktop environment) with 3D VR or AI comes to mind but there is innovation in OS going on. Not many have attempted to answer the OP, so here's my list. Others mentioned Qubes, Urbit, and Mirage.io, which reminded me of Nix OS and HaLVM.

Both innovative and seems daily-driver ready:
1. Qubes OS - https://www.qubes-os.org/ - Linux distro that runs a Xen hypervisor to contain every app (including Windows ones) away from the desktop environment
2. Haiku OS - https://www.haiku-os.org/ - Tiny (under 200MB installed), Non-Linux that is binary-compatible with BeOS, nice understated GUI that is bland but usable
3. ReactOS - http://reactos.org/ - Win32 compatible open source OS, very active development scene working toward full NT kernel ABI compatibility. Seems stable enough to be a daily driver but hardware support is lacking
4. PC-BSD & freeBSD 10 - http://www.pcbsd.org/ http://www.freebsd.org/ - PC-BSD is a desktop distro of freeBSD 10 built for user-friendliness with automatic ZFS snapshoting and a nice graphical package manager, freeBSD 10 has a completely new package manager (pkg-ng replaces the 'pkg' binary)
5. Nix OS - https://nixos.org/ - Linux distro with innovative package manager promising atomic upgrades & rollback.

Innovative server-exclusive (ie no GUI):
5. SmartOS - https://smartos.org/ - Solaris + KVM + Docker w/ full Dtrace support. Claims ZFS as an innovation? Joyent is running a cloud of it
6. CoreOS - https://coreos.com/ - Linux distro exclusively for large Docker deployments. developing a suite of Go tools for datacenter management.

Innovative, but not ready for desktop use:
7. Redox OS - http://www.redox-os.org/ - OS written in Rust (rust-lang), which guarantees a lot of memory-safety, screenshots of desktop in 'News' section
8. Contiki OS - http://www.contiki-os.org/ - Linux distro for IoT embedded devices that claims an innovative network stack
9. Urbit - http://urbit.org/docs/user/int... - *nix distro with exclusively web-based userland, invite-only at the moment, doesn't seem like it will have a UI but that each user is the dev of their own interface
10. Mirage.io - http://mirage.io/ - Develop each app and compile into a single-purpose kernel to be run on some hypervisor
11. HaLVM - https://github.com/GaloisInc/H... - The Haskell Ligthweight Virtual Machine - which runs just the GHC on Xen, another 'build uni-purpose VMs' system

The supported hardware page lists some of the MCU/RF chips that it supports, but what about actual system manufacturers? Do any routers support it? I know it would form mesh networks, but be it IPv6 or IPv4, it would need a gateway/router that assigns these addresses. Are any of those Contiki based?

Also, this OS - since it has a BSD license, I'm guessing that it's not Linux, but is it any sort of Unix derivative, or something else altogether? What are all the features of this OS? It's wonderful that it's compliant w/ several standards, but what are its features that would make it usable in, say, garage doors, toasters, TVs, home security systems & so on?

Devices for 802.15.4 (what ZigBee uses), which is 250kbit max and low power device typically use just a tiny fraction of that, are already using AAA alkaline cells for multiple years (and then the shelf life starts to impact the cells). And the open source operating system TinyOS has made some interesting advancements with power management for its 802.15.4 based wireless stack. And the other front runner for open source wireless stacks is Contiki, with a rather nice mini IPv6 stack that is also capable of being extremely low power.

http://www.contiki-os.org/

I beg to differ... http://www.micrium.com/page/products/rtos/os-iii http://www.freertos.org/ And, while not real time: http://www.contiki-os.org/p/about-contiki.html