I believe the goal of the new OS was to try and take full advantage of RAM only computing and its implications that memristors required. Seems like they have realized that memristors are further away and more costly to R&D than they can stomach right now so they are hoping to usher in a new RAM only paradigm via a linux distro to further justify their continued R&D costs.

The whole printer thing is pure politics. To try and tack some justification for this project onto their profit center.