Introduction: Difference between revisions

The '''OS-tans''' (OSたん) are an Internet phenomenon on [[Futaba Channel]]; the '''OS-tan''' or simply '''OS Girls''' are the personification of several operating systems by various amateur Japanese artists. Although a pure fan creation, the appearance of each OS Girl is generally consistent across artists. The OS Girls are typically depicted as women, with the OS Girls representative of Microsoft Windows (and other operating systems as well) usually depicted as sisters of varying ages.

Natural phenomenon such as the animal and the stone, the thunder and the wind, god/s and spirits, etc. which exists along with humans are very common in myths and fables. Legends such as an animal or a plant that changes into a human form (or vice-versa) not only exist in fairy tales and fables, but such religious stories as well. Whether those stories were hearsay or not, it continued to spread in the form of caricature, novels, etc.

In Japan, personification is not a thing to the extent that is alike especially in creative culture as a whole and can be called unique. It is to believe that the first personification related to computers is the [[:Image:Osidolwin.jpg|OS-idol Win-chan]] ([[:Image:Osidolwinchanpr5.jpg|second version goes here]]) which is also a mascot of [http://www.enterbrain.co.jp/techwin/ TECHWIN Magazine]. There is also a personification used to promote BSD distributions in the net which is known as [[:Image:Tokochan.jpg|Princess of BSD; Magical Toko-chan]], portrayed as an outrider, and to go back even to the time of 8-bit computer models in the 1980s. Even so, the iMacs were also personified by an artist named Satoshi Igarashi which is popularly known as Toy. He created the [http://www.toyboxarts.com/gallery/extra/mbabes-iCandy1/mbabes.html Toy's iMac Girl], the feature of a series of wallpapers first appearing between August 1998 and March 1999.

===Popularity from the Early Times to the Present===

Futaba introduced a setting where a [[Toshiaki]] owns a PC. Then the author, all of a sudden included the personification of every operating system the owner had in a group of women, in which also the author didn't gave an explanation on how were they formed or did appeared in the setting. These group of women are the OS-tans. Those girls belong to the Windows family, which means this women are portrayed as sisters to each other. The mentioned setting on those stories became temporary at first, until Futaba artists accepted it and followed this setting popularly.

Other than the Windows sisters, other operating system such as [[MacOS]], [[Linux]], and [http://ostan-collections.net/wiki/Lindows Linspire] were also given a personification and commonly appeared with the Windows girls at that time. Followed by the personification of [http://ostan-collections.net/wiki/OS9 MacOS9] along with the [http://ostan-collections.net/wiki/OSX MacOSX catgirls] and [http://ostan-collections.net/wiki/Vistan Vista] as well. Futaba artist also started to draw male counterparts at that time. They are known as the [[OS-kuns]]. Although some non-OS male characters exist for programs and hardware. [[Norton Antivirus]] is usually portrayed as a creepy looking, possibly lecherous old doctor.

Since popular in Futaba, OS-tans were also seen in other japanese imageboards as well. Such as +Nijiura+ (''not to be confused with the nijiura board on Futaba'') in which they are more focused on being an OS-tan imageboard. +Nijiura+ mostly makes CG illustrations and wallpapers than 4komas.  

There are still artworks, drawings, flash animations, videos etc. which continues being posted in the internet. In which it gave more exposure to the viewers outside Japan, and because of that, contributions about OS-tans coming from English-speaking imageboards and websites came to grow. Most notable example is [http://www.jkhp.it/OS-tan/ Juzo-kun's renditions of Linux distros wallpapers].

|[http://ostan-collections.net OS-Tan Collections] is an English speaking themed website that deals with OS-tans which is open for all OS-tan viewers around the Internet. Artists from OS-Tan Collections not only includes Futaba's OS-tan current line-up, but also other operating system they could name of and be given personification as well.

To the date of this edit (September 24 2004), it seems that the dispute still can't be resolved, or at least that the parties involved have no intention of resolving it. Generally, Futaba Society considers Deja Vu as another enemy (just like Netrunner), Deja Vu declared it would continue to publish its manga, and other people either remain neutral (e.g. the creators of [[Me-tan|ME-tan]] and [[XP-tan]]) or ignorant of the dispute.