OS-Tan Fanfic: The Tragedy of Windows XP

[grant_p]

Hi, everybody!  I'm sorry for my VERY long absence!  Grad school has been a bear.  To make it up, here's a short fanfic I did today, about the trials of the soon to be outdated XP OS as she tries to deal with new neighbors.  

I also just bought an old Windows ME machine for ten bucks, and I've performed a basic exorcism with an Ubuntu Live-CD.  Works great.  I ma do a follow-up about that one.

This is just a draft done in about twenty minutes, but let me know what you think!

-Grant_P

-The Tragedy of Windows XP
   An OS-Tan Fanfic.

XP hadn't had such a great time recently, but things were improving...

   It seemed that the current box she was living in wasn't up to par anymore.  A Celeron D processor and 256 MB of RAM had seemed ok at the time, but it had made her a lot happier when, after a while, the user had installed 512 MB.  The addition of several USB peripherals, and then the sudden boost to a full 2 gig of memory, had really improved her world.

   But then, things had started going downhill.

   She had felt some relief when Norton was kicked out.  He'd been eating more and more resources, getting so fat and bloated that it was difficult for her to just get around the house, much less accomplish anything.  When that pervert had been replaced with the funny looking AVG first-aide box that worked for free, she'd quickly gotten used to taking more care of herself, and enjoying the extra space.  The doctor had taken all the door locks with him, though, which made almost no sense.  Luckily, another free piece of equipment had been made available.  With a little tinkering, she'd taken the codes that Comodo had given her, and set up a wall of fire around the house.  Crude, but workable, provided she remembered to let the delivery guys in who restocked the AVG box once a day.

   Soon other present started popping up on her doorstep, like a PDF veiwer from someone named 'foxitt' that let he get rid of all the bulky Adobe bricks she'd been forced to keep, and a PDF maker that worked very well.  She should have been suspicious about all these free services, but it didn't occur to her till it was too late that almost ALL her stuff had been changed to them.  Her old stereo system hadn't been updated in some time.  The user seemed to think that this new one with the 'VLC' logo on it worked better.  Even her web browser was outdated, the user seemed to want her to use a fox to send messages.  She tried to convince him that this was insane, setting the default back to normal a couple of times, but he kept changing it back.  At least she still had her old anti-spyware her father had sent her.  It helped her keep her sanity when she found that she was not getting the new 2007 model word processor at all, instead winding up with OpenOffice.

   Still, things seemed to have settled down.  Once she found out that these freebies were a plan by her operator to avoid having her sister move in (he didn't seem to be fond of Vista for some reason, and she'd had enough of her little sister eating everything in the house during a short demo visit to even consider talking him out of it) she decided it would be best to just accept it and move on.

   That was before she found the other girl in her office tying a message to the fox's neck.

   â€œWho the heck are you, and why are you in my house?!”  XP yelled at the other girl, who looked very startled.

   â€œOh...I'm sorry!  I didn't even think you'd know I was here, but I had to get into your cabinet to find a document!  I'm Ubuntu, I'm not here permanently, I was just sent in on a CD by the user because he wanted to play a round off Pingus!”

   XP nodded, she'd heard of Pingus but hadn't ever figured out how to play it.  If this girl knew the rules, great, but why had she needed to go through her filing cabinet?

   â€œThe user wanted to send an e-mail and asked me to attach a file to it.”  the new girl pointed at the notes she'd put in the fox's pouch, before tossing the small critter out the pet port.

   After a while, XP relaxed, as it became apparent that the girl was only there temporarily, eventually leaving the house without a trace that she'd ever been there.  She did start popping in from time to time, and seemed to be doing more and more as time went on, but so long as she cleaned up everything before she left, XP didn't see any reason to bother with her.

   Then, one day, XP woke up to find that something had changed in the night.  Her house had moved!  She hadn't ever thought of the possibility, it was and old 80 gig antebellum home, but now, suddenly, it had been moved back in the lot to where the old empty slave quarters used to be.  On the sight where the house had stood, there was another one, almost identical in outside appearance.

   After quickly checking to make sure that nothing was damaged, XP found that the move had been so seamless even the electricity was working.  She hadn't noticed the move at all till it was over..  Still, she wanted to figure out what this new house in the master's slot was, so she quickly headed next door.

   Bursting in, she had a wave of disorientation.  Even though the house looked the same on the outside, inside it seemed to have a completely different setup.  She couldn't hope to find much of anything.  Luckily, the occupant heard the commotion and came down to investigate.

   It was the Ubuntu girl.

   â€œI'm sorry!”  she said, in that overly helpful (and now very suspicious) tone she had, “I told the user that if I moved in I'd have to rearrange half the house, so he thought it was better to just leave everything in yours as-is, move it back, and put mine in the old place.”

   â€œWhy would my user want to change my house?!”

   â€œHe said that as I was the one who wouldn't compromise my gate-openign policy, I should take the front, so I can greet him first and then he'll just go around to see you.”

   â€œHow will you even know if he shows up?”  XP asked.  She wasn't even sure where the front door WAS in this mess.

   â€œI have a guard grub!  He barks!”

   XP jumped back in disgust at what she'd thought was a funny shaped couch cushion on the floor, that now moved a bit and started to crawl away.  This girl, despite being very polite, was apparently crazier then she'd first appeared if she thought a giant grub was a pet.

   Things did seem to calm down a bit.  The new girl was, it seemed, a good door-guard, and that crazy grub didn't ever miss a visit.  The user didn't seem to visit as much, as most of the actual work started being done by the Ubuntu girl.  It seemed that she worked for free.  XP still handled printing and understanding USB better, though, and the Ubuntu girl could not, it seemed, speak a WORD of active-X, so she still had a steady supply of work with the user's resume pages.

   One day, the user got a new property, and the Ubuntu girl utterly failed to understand how any of the new house worked at all.  XP happily volunteered to fill the gap (much to the relief of her user, who STILL didn't trust Vista to tell him his weight, much less to coordinate his grad classes).

   The new house was HEAVEN.  XP had plenty of space in the new 160 gig split room in the new mobile home, and she even had a brand new DVD-recorder and wi-fi.  Things had never been better, till one day...

   XP woke up in the middle of the night, a huge crash shaking the house, followed by the sound of power tools.  She quickly checked her security system, but it was fine, no one was breaking in.  Wondering what the heck was going on, she stumbled blearily out of bed and walked face-first into a giant box that some guy was building in the middle of her house.  He was spray painting a giant 'V' on it.

   â€œHey, ma'am, we just finished!  Enjoy!”  and with that non-helpful remark, he walked out.

   XP stared at the stupid box clogging some of her personal space, and started banging on the side, trying to figure out what it was, when a small door opened and her fox was tossed out.

   XP quickly grabbed the door and looked inside, to see...the Ubuntu girl, in a small replica of a house, built into the inside of the box.

   â€œHi, me again!  Sorry I couldn't figure out the new place.  I hired Innotek to make this!  It's just like the old house, but separate!  Neat, huh?”

   *   *   *
   As I stepped away from my laptop, having finally got the VirtualBox working and Linux loaded (now in the middle of apt-getting its updates) I paused at a funny noise coming from the hard drive.  Afraid that I might have somehow caused a disk crash, I checked everything but it seemed to be fine.  The noise, apparently, was just a fluke.

   It had been quite unnerving.  For a second it had sounded almost like a tiny scream from somewhere inside my computer.

   I grabbed a Dr. Pepper and ignored it.
                                -to be continued....probably with an update to 8.04 or something.  Tell me what you think.  Note that observatiosn that I am off the deep end will be met with "Obviously..." in order to save posting space.

[C-Chan]

Wow!!!  Grant-san, welcome back!!!  I haven't seen you in ages.  ^___^

Sorry I'm actually a pseudo *Nix developer now, so I'm just passing  through real quick tonight.  But just wanted to say how happy I am to see you again, and how cute the little semi-autobiographical fanfic is.  I especially love the literal analogies for Firefox and GRUB (LOL!), and how whimsical you've made the actions of XP and Ubuntu-san.  

By all means please continue if you have the chance!  ^v^

[grant_p]

Oh!  Great illustrations!

Yeah, everything's gone nuts for me, but I'm alive (barely).  Four major tests in seven days soon, but I'm getting there!

I think I need to check my grammar/spelling, though.  I really did just slap it together in 20 minutes.

Glad it made some sense, I wasn't sure anyone would get it.

[Bella]

Hey, grant_p! I remember you! Nice to see you here again.

Good job with the fanfic! Even as a 20 minute draft (you're a fast writer) it's quite entertaining. Considering that I've always thought XP-san and Ubuntu-sama would get along grandly, I'm really liking this story! And I hope to see where it goes....

[grant_p]

Thanks!

Regarding the recent WME re-install with Linux, that one could be hard.  How would one NOT justify removing ME?

Windows ME:  "Give me one good reason I should have to go!"
User:  "Um...you're YOU."
ME:  "Good point, you've got me there..."

[NejinOniwa]

I think you just mindfucked my perspectives up another hinch, there. Thanks. I'll make use of it.
Good writing, too, although the style isn't really what I'm used to. You could do some cleaning on it - there were a few errors in spelling/grammar here and there - but otherwise you're fine.
GJ!

[Alfamille]

Whoah! It's really rare to see a documented fan fiction here in the forums.

I'm no expert at fanfics (since I haven't even wrote one), but I do go to FF.net to read some. I could say that I like your story for being simple yet fun to read. It's also a good thing that you've given XP-tan a well-done and original trait rather than a sex symbol as others would've done for sure. Her curiosity around her environment and for Ubuntu-tan was cute.

We hope to see more documented fan fiction from you. Or at least from other members as well. Like I said, its really rare to read a documented OS-tan fanfic even if you go search the net. ^_^

[Kami-Tux]

Wow, this was a great story!

[Smokey]

That was good...
XP-tan will be having similar problems when daddy stops calling her in June and she will be (often) replaced by her sister or one of the girls from the Linux family...


You could make a good tv-series from this... ;010

[C-Chan]

I just reread it!  I absolutely LOVE this thing, especially the cute pet Grub that follows Ubuntu-san around!  ^.^

Incidentally, I heard that "Daddy" will still supply XP-san with a new home after June.  It's just a bit more.... spartan....

Basically:

- The house will be no larger than 80 square feet.
- She must make due with 10.2 inch windows or smaller.
- She'll only be given no more than 1 gallon of petrol to run the mobile generator (since she won't be tied to a power grid).
- She's not allowed to touch anything.  ^^'

Fufu... I kid, I kid,... that's only for "discount" housing.  ^___^;
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/195915/microsoft-to-slash-price-of-xp-for-lowcost-laptops.html

But she must shape up regardless -- after all, Ubuntu-san and Co. can work wonders in a straw hut, and accommodations like the above are a veritable mansion for them.  ^__~

[Smokey]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*Runs over to XP-chan and holds on to her*

I won't let 'em hurt you, you can stay with me in a 486 Gig mansion, with nice 19" wide windows and lots of delicious RAM... -I'll even add another 500Gig wing to add some more living space....

*Pets XP-chan*

Added after 1 minutes:

Eerm, I forgot the mansion is shared with PCLOS-chan, though, but she only needs a small room in the west wing...

[grant_p]

Wow, I just got back from a grad school trip, and it seems that everyone actually likes this!

I am thinking of part 2 based on my recent overhaul of the Windows ME system I described earlier.  it worked well but the ME disk is useless.

Does THAT come as a surprise to anyone?

Added after 12 hours 17 minutes:

Another twenty minute story of life, love, and...well, ok, neither of those apply at all.  In fact, the most I saw of this involved a couple CD's and a screwdriver...

-Grant_P




Ubuntu Meets the ME
   An OS-Tan Fanfic.

   I found an old system once...

   It was an old Windows Millennium Edition, with 364 MB RAM and a 20 GB hard drive.  I got it from the guy who was going to throw it away for ten bucks.  Taking it home, I decided to outfit it a bit better with some of the parts of an old system I had that had been hit by lightning.  It was a good idea, I wound up with a good computer for a price that an EEE PC would cry to hear about.  The only thing was, the hard drive had the weirdest problem, and fixing it was an exercise in patience and Open Sorcery...
*   *   *

   Ubuntu pulled her CD into the drive bay and waited outside for a moment to assess the situation.  She knew the user had gotten this new property recently, but she could not figure out why she was being asked to check it out.  Supposedly, XP had been sent in a while back but nothing had come of it.  Actually...where was XP?

   That question was answered very quickly as a blue and white blur burst out of the house and ran slam into Ubuntu's partially open door.

   â€œOw...”  XP muttered, rubbing her head, then jerked up sharply to stare at Ubuntu.  â€œRUN!”

   â€œWhat?  Why?”

   â€œIt's horrible!  It makes no sense!  It's like a fragment of a fragment of a...my head keeps hurting when I think about it and it was too small, and...I don't have to take this!  I'm officially supported!”  XP blurted out, weaving in a disoriented fashion.

   From inside the house, a sound of something breaking was heard.  Ubuntu stared as XP seemed to go totally still, like a rabbit faced with six wolves.

   â€œAre you all right?”  Ubuntu asked trying to be helpful.  â€œWhat exactly is in the house that's causing the trouble?”

   â€œME...”  XP whispered, looking at the door like it was about to burst open and throw a monster at her.

   â€œNo...you're out here.  What's in the house?”

   â€œME...I mean, not me, ME!”

   â€œYou are completely insane...aren't you?”

   â€œLook, charity girl, if you can go into that little dinky box and do something useful I'd love to see you try!  But I'm going home!”  XP stalked off down the road, heading back to the unusually well-equipped mobile home she lived in now, till another noise came form inside the house, causing her to whimper and break into a full run, diving inside her own house to slam the door and pull the blinds.

   â€œLast time I saw her react like that, her little sister came over to visit and had eaten all her RAM chips...”  Ubuntu muttered.  She wasn't sure what XP was talking about, with the house being 'too small'.  Sure, it was a bit compact, even compared to XP's mobile.  It looked like an old economy model from about a generation ago.  Ubuntu, though, didn't have the kind of money XP or her siblings had.  She prided herself on doing almost everything they could do, but she still tended to spend a lot of her time living in her disk.  While XP probably had never had to do such a thing, and couldn't be blamed for not thinking of something she'd never experienced, Ubuntu found it hard on occasion to not look down on those who'd never had to wonder if they were going to get enough RAM that night, not what kind it would be.

   It looked, though, like whoever or whatever was in the house had decided she was ok to come in, because the garage was opening.  She pulled her disk inside, and the door slowly closed behind her.

   The interior door of the house was already standing open, and there was a great deal of clutter in front of it.  Ubuntu had to push hard to get in, but finally wedged herself inside and fumbled for the light switch.

   Surprisingly, the power still worked.  The house, though, looked like someone had gone totally insane with a hammer.  Everything looked cracked and broken.

   Most disturbingly, though, it was not unoccupied.

   A girl sat on the floor, muttering to herself in a distracted way, trying to stack books and failing miserably.

   â€œThis one...here...and....and then....this one...”  the girl muttered, wiping her dusty hands on her apron in a distracted manner, before trying again to put one book on another.  The fact that the books were totally different sizes, and one was standing on-end instead of lying flat, did not seem to make any impression on her till she let go of the one on top.  The collapse apparently took her totally by surprise, and she began to cry quietly.

   â€œUm...hello...can I help you?”  Ubuntu asked.

   The girl didn't seem to notice her at all, but suddenly brightened, like an idea had occurred to her.

   â€œShelves make books stand up!”  she exclaimed, grabbing an armload of random titles and heaving them onto a shelf behind her (Ubuntu noticed, taken aback, that a huge smear of unknown composition was all over the wall, and a mouse that had been...mutilated...was crumpled under it.  She'd never seen a mouse with no balls before).

   The apron-girl's shelving attempt failed, as the shelves themselves were terribly damaged, looking like a crowbar had been smashed through them in a single stroke.  As such, the shelves gave way immediately, and the books collapsed onto the floor again.

   Ubuntu tried to approach, hampered somewhat by the need to climb over a dishwasher that was tipped on its side in the middle of the room with what looked like a microwave partially jammed into it.  â€œHey...um...you know, the user has extra mice, I'm sure that dead one isn't doing a lot of good.  Who are you?”

   â€œME!”  The girl said happily, turning around and smiling for the first time, only now seeming to notice Ubuntu's existence.

   â€œGreat...but...I mean your NAME.”

   â€œME!  And my sister calls me that too!  She just left.  Running like mad.  I don't know why, I thought she was moving in so I offered to help her with her stuff but when I showed her the books I would leave her she started getting confused and...and....”  The ME girl trailed off, this brief lucidity quickly departing.  â€œI wrote them all myself, I thought I did a good job, but maybe if I stacked them they'd be ok...”

   Ubuntu took one of the books and opened it.  She found...nothing.  Nothing comprehensible anyway.  It looked like letters had been randomly scribbled on the pages in many different media.  Crayon...sharpie...pencil...blood?...lipstick...even what looked like mustard.  There were no sentences.  Very few complete words, even.  The ME girl noticed Ubuntu's incomprehension.

   â€œI wrote them when my father said he couldn't support me anymore but I knew I could do things myself so long as I concentrated on what I was doing and I did it...I did it...I...”

   With a sudden shout, she grabbed a broom and swung hard, missing Ubuntu, who wasn't even sure she was being deliberately aimed at or not, but striking the wall which began to crack and make terrible grating noises.  The ceiling began to shift and parts of the tile fell down, covering everything in a layer of plastic dust.

   ME smiled.  â€œIt was a mess.  I hate messes, so I had to clean it up...Isn't it better now?  Nice and white and clean...hey, mousey, it's time to get up and get to work!”  ME poked at the dead mouse, looking confused at why it didn't respond, then pointed to a cracked picture frame.  â€œIt'll be ok.”  she told Ubuntu.  â€œI'll write Daddy, he's rich, he'll buy a new one.  I haven't heard from him in a while...maybe XP went to get him and ask him why he won't write.  That's probably where she went, she'll get Daddy and he'll fix this right up.”

   This thought seemed to cheer the ME girl up considerably, as she sat down on the overturned dishwasher and began to hum quietly to herself, some theme Ubuntu didn't recognize, though the refrain 'Troubled Windows' kept being muttered distinctly.

   Ubuntu carefully moved over to the picture and picked it up, unnoticed by the ME girl, and got the shock of her life.

   It was...Bill.  She'd never met him herself but she'd seen his picture in XP's house too.  A young XP was in the picture, too, with a brighter, saner looking ME and even the sister who just called herself 2000.  An odd dresser but extremely practical, Ubuntu had met and liked her before.  If they were all in the portrait together that meant...

   â€œDear Coder in Heaven...”  Ubuntu muttered.  This neglected, unstable girl was XP's older sister...
*   *   *

   A few days later, Ubuntu checked the mail drop and found that her new appliances had arrived.  She set about installing the new ones and tossed the mail to her pet bird, who was being trained to sort them.

   After leaving ME to sing to herself she'd headed back to her disk and used her own system to contact the user, unsure as to what to report.  She couldn't make heads or tails of any of the books in the house, and the house itself was so heavily damaged that it was about to collapse.  She also had a great deal of trouble explaining what had happened to ME.  According to the user, XP was supposed to be handling that but refused to go back into the house, claiming it was too small.  

   Ubuntu, seeing an opportunity, had offered to move in and take care of it, but actually got more then she had ever dreamed.  The user had found that most of the property, except the house itself, was in great shape, so he'd moved the house (and ME with it) off entirely, and replaced it with a larger one.  The disk bay was upgraded and could take much bigger ones that could be ridden in many times, too.  

   The bird tossed her a note.  It was from the user, he'd apparently had no luck with the other house or ME, who seemed to require a huge amount of therapy.  She was suffering, it seemed, from traumatic post-abandonment, combined with a nasty virus, and had shown an odd tenancy to hyperventilate, turn blue, and collapse.  It was doubtful if she'd ever be able to return to work, so he was asking Ubuntu to just stay on the on the new property and take care of things.  There was also a request to get the DVD system working.

   Ubuntu nodded to herself.  It was not a bad job or place at all.  And despite what XP had complained about, while the economy model was small, and the revised one was still not huge, there was plenty of RAM, almost 345 worth, and that was more then enough for her and all her pets.  Maybe the whole Windows family just over-ate or something.  

   â€œDVD...”  Ubuntu muttered, looking through all the boxes that had been delivered.  She had figured that might happen, she'd ordered a part somewhere...

   Ah, here it was, in the 'VLC' box...

*   *   *
   It looked like the restoration was a success.  True, the old hard drive was useless, but what had I expected, getting a computer out of the trash?

   I'd NOT expected my legal copy of XP to utterly fail to load, that was true, but easily gotten around with a Live-CD and a hard drive out of my old blown system.  This recycle bin computer would never be top of the line, but it would play Grandma's movies and check mail, what more was there?

   I looked over at the old 20 gig hard drive.  I made a mental note to mark it as bad and have it recycled.  Every time I picked it up the loose seek head made a chuckling sound like some awful gremlin laughing...


*   *   *

Feedback welcome!  This is a sort of sequel to the Tragedy of Windows XP, which is where she got her 'mobile home'.  It's a rather strange place and the neighbors wonder what goes on in there that got it the name “The Laptop”.

[C-Chan]

Yo Grant_P! Long time no see, buddy! ^v^
I'm actually a bit short on time, so please don't mind the small post for now. Just quickly wanted to say thank you for stopping by and also for posting another charming piece of work. ^___^

I read it with gusto, and have a lot to say about it, as well as a few minor edits, and also some of my own real-life experiences with similar refurbishments of old machines (although I used Debian which is a lot faster than *Buntu, albeit far more stringent regarding the FOSS philosophy and the distribution of non-free anything).

The only problem I might see is that ending seems a bit weaker than Part 1's. This will need further clarification, but it didn't have that same cute undertone as the events that eventually led to XP's tiny screams squeaking out of the user's laptop in the first. Granted it was a different scenario, and of course that nicely detailed personification of everything is successfully reapplied to the letter (especially in the case of Thunderbird). I would imagine, perhaps, that all I'm really looking for is a little more fleshing out of the scenes with Ubuntu setting up the new home, perhaps some involving the actual laptop usage. We'll see.

In any event, I know I owe you m0ar feedback, so do please wait for me. ^___^

Added after 1 hours 42 minutes:

===========================

Okay, charade's over.  Thank you for moving this over here, Grant-san.  That's why you're such a swell guy -- just wish you'd stop by more often, ^__~

In any event, wait's over.  I can dissect this piece by piece.  ^.^

Ubuntu Meets the ME
An OS-Tan Fanfic.

Kudos on the pun.  Aurora-hime would be proud.  ^^

Plus it foreshadows classic moments such as “ME...I mean, not me, ME!”

It was an old Windows Millennium Edition, with 364 MB RAM and a 20 GB hard drive. I got it from the guy who was going to throw it away for ten bucks. Taking it home, I decided to outfit it a bit better with some of the parts of an old system I had that had been hit by lightning. It was a good idea, I wound up with a good computer for a price that an EEE PC would cry to hear about. The only thing was, the hard drive had the weirdest problem, and fixing it was an exercise in patience and Open Sorcery...

BWAAH!!!  My two EeePCs resent that!  ^___^
But yeah, I hear ya.

In fact, that computer seems LIGHT YEARS better than the Windows ME machine I refurbished last year.  That was a Gateway desktop circa 2000, with an 800mhz Celeron, 64MB of RAM, a 10GB hard drive, no ethernet and an ancient integrated Intel Graphics card.  ME-san crawled in that machine, but Puppy-chan was okay with it (and downright frolicked once I added the swap).  I still needed more RAM in order to get other LiveCDs working, so I purchased another 128MB of RAM (at an insultingly-cheap price), an ethernet card and updated the BIOS....

And voila!  I was distro-shopping like it was any other computer.  Granted it was a bit on the slow side for the more top-heavy systems, but Knoppix, Puppy, SAM and Elive performed incredibly well on it.

I did however settle on DreamLinux in the end, since it had the fewest caveats in terms of speed, ease-of-use, stabiity, software library and aesthetic.  Guess I made a good choice, since the 7 and 9 year olds who I gave it too have been happy with it ever since.

There's an ongoing story regarding an '98/'99 Compaq and PCLinuxOS MiniMe, but I'll wait till my Sync RAM arrives before I tell it.  128MB is fine, but if I can get it to 256 megs for mere cents, why not?  

That question was answered very quickly as a blue and white blur burst out of the house and ran slam into Ubuntu's partially open door.

“Ow...” XP muttered, rubbing her head, then jerked up sharply to stare at Ubuntu. “RUN!”

I take it the two are friends now, or at least XP-san is tolerant of... how'd she call her?  Charity Girl?  

From inside the house, a sound of something breaking was heard. Ubuntu stared as XP seemed to go totally still, like a rabbit faced with six wolves.

Well the story itself is one giant metaphor, but I like the use of these metaphor upon metaphors to enhance the story's "visual".  

“Look, charity girl, if you can go into that little dinky box and do something useful I'd love to see you try! But I'm going home!” XP stalked off down the road, heading back to the unusually well-equipped mobile home she lived in now, till another noise came form inside the house, causing her to whimper and break into a full run, diving inside her own house to slam the door and pull the blinds.

Just gotta love that "Charity Girl" bit.  Probably better write it down, so I can share with Bella-hime later.    ^.^

What's this about an Unusually Well-Equipped Mobile Home?  Reminds me of an electronic store I went to recently, which stocked some adorable EeePCs alongside big hulking Vista laptops.  The majority looked so feature-rich and futuristic hardware-rise, you'd think they could be used to launch ICBMs.  However, the equally-excessive price tags kept the crowds around my babies instead.  ^.^

While XP probably had never had to do such a thing, and couldn't be blamed for not thinking of something she'd never experienced, Ubuntu found it hard on occasion to not look down on those who'd had to wonder if they were going to get enough RAM that night, not what kind it would be.

It does strike me as admiral that Ubuntu (as well as other systems) can do a relatively fantastic job installing and setting themself up among an infinite variety of processors, RAM chips, optical drives, and perhaps to a still shaky extent graphics cards.  The added bonus is that those like Ubuntu-san (or Mama Debian) can also install across different architectures too.

Not but 3 weeks ago, I had to fetch PowerPC versions of Debian and Ubuntu 6.06.  Despite some caveats, they both still worked surprisingly well for a platform that's been all but abandoned in the consumer market.

Surprisingly, the power still worked. The house, though, looked like someone had gone totally insane with a hammer. Everything looked cracked and broken.

Hmmm,... metaphor or not, that sounds like imminent hard drive failure to me.  

“This one...here...and....and then....this one...” the girl muttered, wiping her dusty hands on her apron in a distracted manner, before trying again to put one book on another. The fact that the books were totally different sizes, and one was standing on-end instead of lying flat, did not seem to make any impression on her till she let go of the one on top. The collapse apparently took her totally by surprise, and be began to cry quietly.

...And that like a bad attemt to Defrag (wow, haven't thought about that in a LOOOONG time).

BTW, that last part is probably "...she began to cry quietly".  Should it actually end at "quiety", I wonder?  :|

*ponders*

“Shelves make books stand up!” she exclaimed, grabbing an armload of random titles and heaving them onto a shelf behind her (Ubuntu noticed, taken aback, that a huge smear of unknown composition was all over the wall, and a mouse that had been...mutilated...was crumpled under it. She'd never seen a mouse with no balls before).

WTH?!!!!!!!  XD

....

Ah yes,.. mice from those days had trackballs underneath.  Or is that in reference to the laptop's trackpad/ball/thumb thingy?

Also, not sure if that passange in parethesis needs to be in parenthesis.  Seems okay to just leave it as a standard sentence.

Ubuntu took one of the books and opened it. She found...nothing. Nothing comprehensible anyway. It looked like letters had been randomly scribbled on the pages in many different media. Crayon...sharpie...pencil...blood?...lipstick...even what looked like mustard. There were no sentences. Very few complete words, even. The ME girl noticed Ubuntu's incomprehension.

“I wrote them when my father said he couldn't support me anymore but I knew I could do things myself so long as I concentrated on what I was doing and I did it...I did it...I...”

Awwww... from my own experience fixing Win Boxes, that sounds like viral infection too.  I think you mentioend that before to me.  

You could say that XP was just as scared of being contaminated herself.

With a sudden shout, she grabbed a broom and swung hard, missing Ubuntu, who wasn't even sure she was being deliberately aimed at or not, but striking the wall which began to crack and make terrible grating noises. The ceiling began to shift and parts of the tile fell down, covering everything in a layer of plastic dust.

Fufu... funny little bit of randomness -- it's kinda cool that Ubuntu-san just take all this like a casual viewer.  She reminds me of a doctor making a house call to family infected with plague, and not really perturbed by it.  8D

Just one thing, the sentence structure seems a bit off, and I'm not sure if there is technically such a thing as plastic dust (unless its particulates, or components of fiberglass).  Here's a suggestion:

With a sudden shout, she grabbed a broom and swung hard, missing Ubuntu (who wasn't even sure she was being deliberately aimed at or not) but striking the wall instead, which began to crack and make terrible grating noises. The ceiling began to shift and chunks of tiles began to fall to the floor, covering everything in a layer of white dust.

ME smiled. “It was a mess. I hate messes, so I had to clean it up...Isn't it better now? Nice and white and clean...hey, mousey, it's time to get up and get to work!” ME poked at the dead mouse, looking confused at why it didn't respond, then pointed to a cracked picture frame. “It'll be ok.” she told Ubuntu. “I'll write Daddy, he's rich, he'll buy a new one. I haven't heard from him in a while...maybe XP went to get him and ask him why he won't write. That's probably where she went, she'll get Daddy and he'll fix this right up.”

Awww... that is such a sad thing when you think about it.  My poor OS/2 machine at work certainly needs a lot of love, since Big Blue unofficially pulled the plug on it a decade ago, and officially in late 2006.  She tries hard, but simply can't keep up with the times all on her own.

I guess that's the reason I have no love for proprietary systems anymore -- planned obsolescence is practically a requirement for profit.  For M$ to continue making the kind of money it does now, XP-san MUST go through that same physical and mental breakdown some day.  

Big contrast to Debian, where everything is supported under the sun, if not by the head development team, then certainly by the community enthusiasts, of which anyone can become a part of with a little patience.

This thought seemed to cheer the ME girl up considerably, as she sat down on the overturned dishwasher and began to hum quietly to herself, some theme Ubuntu didn't recognize, though the refrain 'Troubled Windows' kept being muttered distinctly.

I enjoyed your last story even more precisely because it also does pay so much tribute to the canon story elements.  It shows you're both willing to being creative AND do your research too.  

It was...Bill. She'd never met him herself but she'd seen his picture in XP's house too. A young XP was in the picture, too, with a brighter, saner looking ME and even the sister who just called herself 2000. An odd dresser but extremely practical, Ubuntu had met and liked her before. If they were all in the portrait together that meant...

“Dear Coder in Heaven...” Ubuntu muttered. This neglected, unstable girl was XP's older sister...

BWAHAHA!!!  

I gotta write that down to for classic Linux-tan catch phrases....

*writes that between "Open Sorcery' and "fsck this"*

BTW, I can't recommend that Ubuntu-san ever meet Bill.  Let's just say "He ain't no Mark [Shuttleworth]."

A few days later, Ubuntu checked the mail drop and found that her new appliances had arrived. She set about installing the new ones and tossed the mail to her pet bird, who was being trained to sort them.

So guess she doesn't use a pet cat to "Claw" its way through the correspondence.  

Too bad the pet grub didn't make an appearance.  

After leaving ME to sing to herself she'd headed back to her disk and used her own system to contact the user, unsure as to what to report. She couldn't make heads or tails of any of the books in the house, and the house itself was so heavily damaged that it was about to collapse. She also had a great deal of trouble explaining what had happened to ME. According to the user, XP was supposed to be handling that but refused to go back into the house, claiming it was too small.  

Ubuntu, seeing an opportunity, had offered to move in and take care of it, but actually got more then she had ever dreamed. The user had found that most of the property, except the house itself, was in great shape, so he'd moved the house (and ME with it) off entirely, and replaced it with a larger one. The disk bay was upgraded and could take much bigger ones that could be ridden in many times, too.

I guess with the "house" as badly damaged as it was, there was not much point to "burn it down and reconstruct it", or even to get her pet clam to run diagnostics on the beleaguered girl.  

Not with new "house" prices as cheap as they are.  

Lucky that you were able to find a good replacement optical disc drive for that laptop.  Replacements for my old HP laptop's faltering DVD drive is a bit harder to come by, although the external drive I keep around has served me quite well.  

The bird tossed her a note. It was from the user, he'd apparently had no luck with the other house or ME, who seemed to require a huge amount of therapy. She was suffering, it seemed, from traumatic post-abandonment, combined with a nasty virus, and had shown an odd tenancy to hyperventilate, turn blue, and collapse. It was doubtful if she'd ever be able to return to work, so he was asking Ubuntu to just stay on the on the new property and take care of things. There was also a request to get the DVD system working.

If memory serves, Ubuntu-san mainly lived inside a Virtualbox in the last story (plus on a small hard drive partition).  So this is actually pretty much her first true house all to herself, no?  

That's nice actually.  After all, there are many things you can do on a real computer that are impossible to do in Virtualbox, such as Compiz Fusion (or anything requiring at least some degree of 3D acceleration), CD/DVD burning, and unbroken USB usage.  Plus it's closer to her natural speed -- Virtualbox always seemd kinda slow for me in XP, even with 2GB of RAM (from my work laptop).

Ubuntu nodded to herself. It was not a bad job or place at all. And despite what XP had complained about, while the economy model was small, and the revised one was still not huge, there was plenty of RAM, almost 345 worth, and that was more then enough for her and all her pets. Maybe the whole Windows family just over-ate or something.

My EeePC has 512MB of RAM and can do EVERYTHING,... except [ironically] run Virtualbox for an XP machine.  When you think about it, it really is exceptional memory management -- probably because it was designed by users for users, and not for RAM manufacturers.  

“DVD...” Ubuntu muttered, looking through all the boxes that had been delivered. She had figured that might happen, she'd ordered a part somewhere...

Ah, here it was, in the 'VLC' box...

Ah, so the user likes VLC too, eh?  I'm actually more partial to Kaffeine myself, but like how VLC's dependencies already set up functionality for literally 95% of all media formats you'll ever need.  

Unlike her cousin Mint, though, Ubuntu-san has to jump a few hurdles to get encrypted DVDs and WMAs to play.

It looked like the restoration was a success. True, the old hard drive was useless, but what had I expected, getting a computer out of the trash?

I'd NOT expected my legal copy of XP to utterly fail to load, that was true, but easily gotten around with a Live-CD and a hard drive out of my old blown system. This recycle bin computer would never be top of the line, but it would play Grandma's movies and check mail, what more was there?

Well just the fact that you saved it from the trash bin is reason enough to celebrate.  Collect enough of these and give them all top-of-the-line Linux distributions, and you could easily help an impoverished school or library seek technological parity.  Education doesn't need "top of the line" as much as it just needs a "line".

I looked over at the old 20 gig hard drive. I made a mental note to mark it as bad and have it recycled. Every time I picked it up the loose seek head made a chuckling sound like some awful gremlin laughing...

Fufu,... sorry, didn't notice this in my first read.  Is this a small homage to Part 1?  

In any event, I like this more rereading it.  I still think more detail can be added to ending (unless you're working on an immediate sequel), but it certainly reads a lot better during my second run through it.  Maybe it's best to keep it as is.  

In any event, on a final note, some illustrations to compliment your latest creative effort:

[grant_p]

Thanks for the feedback!  The processor in this thing is a Celeron Coppermine, whatever THAT is...

'Charity Girl' came from Ubuntu's tenancy to wind up being used in a wide range of computer refurbishment drives, and so far it seems to do well at it.  The reason I used it was, sadly, it happened to work.  I installed Xubuntu at first, but it had troubles with the CD drive, Ubuntu worked fine, then I finally used it for the HD install despite being slow.

I'm not welded to it, I can easily try something else, it's only slightly below my VirtualBox install in terms of expendability for my own fun value.

I think XP would relate somewhat to Ubuntu more as she's finding herself demanded more and more by the 'geek' community as opposed to the mainstream, and though it depresses her she hangs to it like the survival strategy it is.  No one cares what color their life vest is when the plane is going down over water, after all.

The Mobile Home is the new laptop I got in the previous story (and Real Life...) that Ubuntu didn't run well on that got the VM installed.


And the RAM thing was based off a lousy experience I had a while back where my family once had to actually take rotten produce and pig food to stay alive during a serious problem we had.  But we kept our house, which was the big thing for us,and we're doing much better now.  I can't easily look down on people who are homeless having come very close myself, and I do, I admit, buy meals of people who probably don't need them, but I've been hungry before.  I don't want others to have to be.

Oops...you're right, it was “she was crying”, I changed it!  I also added a few of your edits, too, they do work better.  The dust was actually case material but that probably isn't clear or even recognizable.

You're right, for me, this really would be Ubuntu's first house.  Everything else I've run her on has been virtual or Live-CD mode.

And the ending was, oddly, REAL.  The old hard drive was useless, totally crashed.  It could get to its boot screen, then fail.  It finally conked out entirely, but made the most awful chuckle sound doing it.

I put in a 60 gig, as I have spare hard drives all over the place, and the lightning hit computer had a salvageable DVD drive, and TWO good 80 gig if I ever want to reformat them.

Thank you again for the feedback and pictures!  I'll try to write more later but I have to get off as there's a storm incoming and I don't want to loose another system, even a cheap one.  I'm sorry I don't stop in more, grad school is attempting to eat me.

[C-Chan]

Yo Grant-san!  Glad all that was helpful.  ^^

Well stop by later, but just wondering if you'd be interested in trying out MEPIS.  Like PCLinuxOS, it's a very active community-based distro focused on user-friendliness and all-encompassment.  Best of all, the latest version is Debian-based, so is fast and has a huge software repository.  

Only problem is:

1)  To make room in its LiveCD, it does not set up a unionfs environment -- meaning you can't install additional software while in LiveCD mode.

2)  I've never used it for long periods of time, so I'm hoping you'd find out for me how good it is.  ^^'

I wish I could recommend PCLinuxOS, but there's currently some issues with core functions that we're working hard to resolve before the official 2008 release.  2007 might work fine, but its kernel is old compared to the cool new one Tex and gang have been working on.  Using MiniME 2008 is usually a better starting point if you want to install a modern PCLOS system -- but that's just a base installation, so you'll need to add all the remaining components yourself (e.g., OpenOffice, Firefox, Ark, Konqueror extensions, etc).

Will talk more later!  ^^