OS-tan Theory Revival

[Krizonar]

I'm guessing that she disregards the older OSXs, who likewise disregard the Unices, unless coerced into attending the meetings? As I see the older OSXs as knowing of their Unix ancestry, but seeing themselves as Macs first or only,

That would seem to be how it is to me, Apple touted OSX as a Unix platform with a command line but that's all they did, they never went into much detail besides yupyupyup it's Unix, because Mac OSX is what they sell obviously.

That sounds about right. It could also be that Unix-sama bided her time, waiting for an OSX-tan of suitable power/magic to come along

We'll surprise you.
Mac is our heart, Unix is but our blood, hooplah!


Also; dat Macintosh IIfx. Where is your workstation now?

[Aurora Borealis]

@Bella: You're right- I was asking about how characters representing non-existent OSes would fit into the OS-tan universe. Interesting theories, the one on VMS's skills shows another side and reason why she is or appears to be emotionally cold, and reconciles that with her also being Kuudere or Dandere! I remember when she was first listed as such in the OS-tans and Tropes thread, I was quite surprised. Her claims, plus Multics' and Unix's opportunities as the most powerful OS-tan alive sound spot on.

Another contender for that claim is QNX-tan, but she willingly falls short of her potential because she doesn't want to risk getting corrupted or overwhelmed by her power, and also possibly wanting to keep up the underdog image so she'll still fit in with her friends in the Anti$oft Coalition. A very powerful and ambitious OS-tan who is an underachiever at the same time.

[Chocofreak13]

if she's a ghost, wouldn't she just spend time with the other undead OSes, like system 1? or maybe she IS dead, and they just don't talk about her because it's an uncomfortable topic.

@bella: are you sure you didn't say that sage comment because of stew's username

[Aurora Borealis]

@Choco: System 1-tan's still alive; maybe you mean Apple I-tan? System 5-tan's existence is a conundrum, with her having either died, or being an apparition that was spontaneously created (depends on interpretation), yet she isn't listed among the deceased OS-tans. Maybe she's able to exist in the living world because she's still connected to the Classic Macs' lifeforce somehow, making her alive and (un)dead(?) at the same time, and thus not fitting the definition of a deceased OS-tan. @_@

Are we in Mind Screw territory yet?

Though that would be a neat ability for her to visit both the worlds of the living and deceased.

[Bella]

I'm guessing that she disregards the older OSXs, who likewise disregard the Unices, unless coerced into attending the meetings? As I see the older OSXs as knowing of their Unix ancestry, but seeing themselves as Macs first or only,

That would seem to be how it is to me, Apple touted OSX as a Unix platform with a command line but that's all they did, they never went into much detail besides yupyupyup it's Unix, because Mac OSX is what they sell obviously.

I'm glad the theory is satisfactory to you. (You are one of the go-to Mac-tan experts around here after all). ^^

Another contender for that claim is QNX-tan, but she willingly falls short of her potential because she doesn't want to risk getting corrupted or overwhelmed by her power, and also possibly wanting to keep up the underdog image so she'll still fit in with her friends in the Anti$oft Coalition. A very powerful and ambitious OS-tan who is an underachiever at the same time.

I can't really comment since I don't know much about QNX, the -tan or the OS. ;^; But I'll also mention that OS/2-tan probably fancied herself one of the most powerful (or at least potentially-powerful) OS-tans, though she was thwarted by a mix of corporate incompetence and character flaws! Also, ITS-tan thinks she could have been more powerful than Unix-tan had she gained a larger following. It's debatable if either of them were actually ever as powerful as they assumed they were, though.

@bella: are you sure you didn't say that sage comment because of stew's username

Nope. It comes from a mix of in-story hints about SAGE-tan, Word of God revelations, and following various confirmed facts about SAGE-tan to their logical conclusions.

For instance, it's still a huge mystery how SAGE-tan remains alive, even when all of her systems were shut down (supposedly a death-blow for an OS-tan). She's been hinted at being extremely powerful - having the ability to mentally-connect to just about any OS-tan, commandeer their sensory systems for use by her own body and draw off their powers, and possibly have limited precognitive abilities. Not to mention the theory that she (wittingly or unwittingly) laid the foundation of computer-tan culture and manipulated events to mold the course of OS-tan history.

There's also the matter of her possibly resurrecting Multics, which fits into another theory that she may be attempting to reunite her family and friends, both living and dead.

[Aurora Borealis]

@Bella: QNX was originally an academic OS in the 80's, but wasn't very successful and became one of the most successful embedded OSes starting in the 90's or early 2000's; used in a great variety of hardware, including automobiles, and nuclear power plants, and the most powerful routers. That gives her a tremendous amount of hardware to draw her power from. Despite success, QNX isn't very well known aside from it being the basis of Blackberry's Playbook OS, which isn't selling very well!

QNX-tan is essentially a superpowered nuclear physicist who is now competing in the mobile market because her new boss, Blackberry-tan said so.

OS/2-tan definitely would have been one of the most powerful consumer-level OS-tans, whose power would easily blow all the DOS-tans and nearly all the Windows-tans out of the water, so to speak. NT-tan may have been the biggest threat to her. Also assuming that OS/2-tan knew that NT-tan was genetically engineered from some of the same technology as her, NT-tan's other genetics, inherited from VMS-tan, and the more advanced training she received (that was originally promised to OS/2-tan!) would have caught her off guard. If it weren't for her constantly getting screwed over after MS-IBM Family's break-up, OS/2-tan could have been even more powerful.

That explanation for SAGE-tan makes perfect sense. And I thought her death exemption was mainly just for story reasons!

[NejinOniwa]

SAGE Psychopathic god much?

[Bella]

@Aurora: I had no idea QNX-tan is so powerful. : o

@Nej: Yeah, pretty much. She's like the ultimate wrathful, abandoned deity. .__.

[Bella]

Theory: Multics-tan originated animal features/animal magic in most OS-tans.
Multics was the first (documented) OS-tan with animal features. Her daughter Unix-tan sports owl ears and has wings, CB Unix has cardinal features, various BSD-tans have horns and tails (and one has dragonfly wings), Plan 9-tan has bunny features, the OSX-tans have cat features, Minix-tan has raccoon ears, various Linuces have animal features, etc, etc. OpenVME-tan is loosely related to both Unix AND Multics, and she has wings too.

You can even make a case that Multics passed down animal traits into the Windows NT family via OpenVMS, who shared a loose spiritual relation to Multics. While VMS-tan doesn't have any outward animal features, she it very closely linked with sharks, and seems to display a lot of shark-like personality traits. Her granddaughter, Inu-T-tan, has dog features (and 2K-tan is often portrayed as a catgirl, though I'm not sure if that's canonical or just artists' attempts to make her more moe). 

That being said, there are several OS-tans that I know of that have animal features despite being seemingly unrelated to the Multics line - KolibriOS, GS/OS (?) and Bendix G-15-tan are three I can name off the top of my head, there're probably more that I'm missing though.

Theory: The DEC-tans (and other minicomputer/mainframe factions) were wary of the Unices because of their political and magical power structure.
Until the Unices came along, OS-tan clans/factions were typically comprised of many loosely- or un-related OS-tans. There would sometimes be small family structures - with a mother and children, or a group of sisters - but it was very rare to see large families. Magical powers were usually an entirely individual, and often learned, skill.

The Unix "clan" was different - with a distinct lineage, all the Unix-tans being related by blood or cloning, and all/most of them deriving their magic from a shared "pool" of power. Animal-type OS-tans are common among the Unices, so it's probably not a stretch of the imagination to think that their distinct forms of animal-type magic and unusual physical features were strange, and sometimes upsetting, to outside OS-tans. Combined with their reputation for assimilating cultures and whatnot, you can see why so many outside factions were afraid of them.

[Aurora Borealis]

First theory: It does seem that nearly every animal-featured OS-tan has some tie to Multics, whether a descendant or a spiritual tie. If VMS's tie with Multics is all spiritual, maybe VMS's animal-associated traits must have been acquired, yet changed her on a genetic level so they could be passed down. If this, you may have an example of Lamarck Was Right (acquired traits being passed down through a bloodline)

The alternate explanation is that VMS's traits were developed independently, and she had them all along, but they just needed to be awakened.

Generally, 2K-tan's cat ears are fake, they are mechanical and resemble speakers, unless 2K-tan is a cyborg catgirl?

KolibriOS, GS/OS and Bendix G-15 are among the outliers, whose animal features were developed independently as a result of genetic and magic engineering. I would also nominate DexOS as another, being associated with ants, though she's a robot.

Second theory: That's a really good explanation why lineages older than Unix aren't clear-cut, or are less organized, like the DECs and their various branches, or the CDCs, whom might or might not be blood-related to one another. On another note, the Unixes were the first clear-cut OS lineage, which made the structure of sharing magic from a pool of power possible, and as a result was influential, with OS families created afterwards using that type of structure. Because of the shared code-base of related OSes, that is feasible, but hardware-tans, even related ones, wouldn't be able to have that kind of structure since hardware can't share code.

Both Windows bloodlines and DOS would also have their own shared code pools for magic like the Unixes do, since they aren't very dependent on hardware.

The home computer-tans, being mostly or all hardware-based, would have all their abilities individually, like most of the mainframes. OS-tans created from no existing bloodline would also be this. The Commodore-tans might be an exception though, with different hardware but all run versions of Commodore BASIC as their OS, and may take the middle-ground approach in which part of their power is individual-based (hardware), part from a shared code pool (shared OS lineage, if a version of BASIC counts).

The Classic Mac-tans may also take the middle ground, because the Classic Mac OS* is more hardware-dependent than Windows, DOS and Unix, yet less hardware dependent than most mainframes and home computers. Strangely, the Classic Macs are genetically very similar, practically modified clones as even Mac OS9 at its core changed little from System 1.0. Yet there are considerable individual differences among them in appearance, and in abilities, such as System 5 being a ghost, System 2 essentially lost the superpower lottery, System 4, 6 and 7 are super soldiers, and System 3.4 is some freak of nature who cheated death many times.

Even more odd, System 7 is the least hardware-dependent Classic Mac version, being the only one that ran on the authorized Mac Clones.

*OSX is about as hardware-dependent as Classic, unless you count the "Hackintoshes"!

[Bella]

TBH, I never really thought about other OS-tan familes besides the Unices having shared power pools. I always thought it was a Unix-specific trait. O.o

I don't really have anything to comment on/add beside that. ^^;

Crackpot Totally Sane Theory: Multics is CTSS and Besys-tan's child.

Let me explain through the magic of colors:

+ =

Admit it, you will never look at Multics' purple hair and blue eyes the same way again.
(Also, that Multics icon is from a picture I'm working on... gonna post it soon, I promise.)

[Aurora Borealis]

@Bella: I may have misunderstood, since I was thinking of the OS-tan life force theory which involved shared code pools within OS families, and thought that for most OS-based families, the same thing would apply to their magic; I was also thinking about how certain magic styles run in families (unless those abilities, even the shared ones are hard-wired on an individual level?). Did what I propose in my last post sound reasonable, and do you accept? I thought the Unixes were the first to pioneer the magic-powered code pool.

As for Multics' parentage... Hahahaha! That sounds and looks perfect!

[Bella]

@Bella: I may have misunderstood, since I was thinking of the OS-tan life force theory which involved shared code pools within OS families, and thought that for most OS-based families, the same thing would apply to their magic; I was also thinking about how certain magic styles run in families (unless those abilities, even the shared ones are hard-wired on an individual level?). Did what I propose in my last post sound reasonable, and do you accept? I thought the Unixes were the first to pioneer the magic-powered code pool.

Oh! Sorry, I misunderstood you. I'm not familiar with applications of OS-tan life force/code-pooling outside the Unix family (and in fact am a bit confused by the concept ^^;), but I'm pretty sure it was agreed that most OS-tan families would have some sort of shared code pool? I don't have any objections to the ideas you posed and am in agreement, though I still think that the Unices might be more sensitive to and easily affected by changes in their code pool.

As for Multics' parentage... Hahahaha! That sounds and looks perfect!

This may be one of my better crackpot theories (along with Sam Linux-tan being PDP-1 in disguise). 

If you wanted to form it into a dramatic plot point, you could argue that CTSS-tan originally planned for Multics' stay with BESYS, in hopes of her daughter discovering the other half of her heritage... whether or not Multics ever discovered her connection to BESYS could be left unclear, but either way, it would be kind of heartbreaking.

[Aurora Borealis]

Yeah, we agreed about members of OS-tan families sharing a code pool as their life force, however since the Unixes and Linuxes have some of the least hardware dependence, they'd should the most versatility in their magic, and I agree that they'd be the most affected by changes to their code pool.

Regarding CTSS, BESYS and Multics: It sounds like CTSS had good intentions sending Multics to BESYS, but presumably didn't know that BESYS felt resentful of Multics since her creation cost some of BESYS' life force and cause her health to decline.

[Bella]

Okay, I follow you now.

It makes it all the sadder that BESYS gave up part of her life force/health to create Multics-tan, and Multics, in turn, was so ungrateful and impetuous toward her.

It's also worth noting that Multics may've used up some of CTSS-tan's life-force when being created (this would be a very literal real-world example, since many users abandoned MIT's CTSS machines when Multics was made available). Which makes me wonder ... perhaps Multics-tan was so powerful, that she had to use up a LOT of her parents' magical powers/life force just to support her own nascent magical abilities?