UNIX

Bell Labs Unix
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Character Information
Common Names	Bell Labs Unix
Other Names	UNIX, Unix-sama, UNICS
Human Name(s)	Eunice Bell
Faction	Linux Unix Consortium
Lineage	Unix (matriarch/founder)
Rival(s)	Various
Appearance
Height	153 cm (5'0")
Hair Color	purple
Eye Color	light blue
Weapon(s)	fire magic, various sorcery techniques, metal staff
Design
First Appearance	Feb 2007 (preconcept), Sep 2007 (finished)
Technical Information
System Personified	(Bell Labs) Unix
Developer(s)	Bell Labs, ATT
Debut	Summer 1969
Latest release	Version 10, 1989

Technical details

Unix was originally developed in 1969 by AT&T Bell Labs employees Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Douglas McIlroy. It was originally developed to run on the PDP-7, a small and underpowered minicomputer. Because of its sparse development conditions, Unix was a radical departure from OS designs of the day; built to be small, flexible and highly portable. From the PDP-7 it was ported to the PDP-11 and in 1973 was rewritten entirely in C. AT&T had been forbidden to enter the computer industry by an anti-trust lawsuit, and thus couldn't sell Unix as a product; but this didn’t stop its creators from sending out Unix tapes and source code to those who asked. Because of this, Unix quickly caught on as an academia, with people the world over modifying and creating new versions.

Bell Labs’ Unix had many research and academic versions released, Version 7 being considered the “last true (research) Unix”. Some of its more famous descendants include BSD, Plan 9, Solaris, AIX, and Mac OS X. It inspired the creation of countless more Unix-like OSes – Linux perhaps the most famous example.

The history of Unix is inextricably linked with Multics; the two OSes shared several developers, and in fact the “failure” of Multics inspired the creation of Unix. While Unix carries some traits inherited from Multics, it is the opposite in design and philosophy – Unix being simple and improvised, Multics complex and built with deliberate plans in mind.

Character details

General

While over 40 years old chronologically, Unix-sama is physically a small teenage girl, around five feet tall. She has long dark purple hair, piercing blue eyes implanted with the Bell Labs logo and wears square or horn-rimmed glasses. She has horned owl ears, symbolically carrying connotations of wisdom, truth and darkness (as well as associations with goddesses and magical powers). Dressing in simplistic monochrome clothing and boots, she wields a polished aluminum staff inscribed with roman numerals – each said to stand for a tenet of the Unix Philosophy – and is occasionally depicted with black wings, a throwback to her mother. Since the early 1990s she has been confined to a wheelchair, due to physically manifested psychological trauma that occurred during the Unix Wars.

Highly intelligent, Unix is an artful mind-gamer capable of manipulating and defeating enemies without using physical force. In her youth she gained psionic powers from her mother, Multics; she wields this energy mostly in the form of fire control and psychic projection of images, but has dabbled in other forms as well. She is often wrongly considered monstrous and heartless; while she strayed from her humble philosophy and became a calculating industrialist, witnessing the near-destruction of her family during the Unix Wars and her subsequent alliance with Linux has made her strive to return to her original ethos. Her gentler side is known by her friends, as well as the vintage-tans she helps to support at the Binteeji Renmei.

Family and relationships

Her descendants

UNIX never showed much in the way of compassion towards her daughters. Unlike her attitude towards the vintage OS-tans, she has a Social Darwinist attitude, leaving them to fend for themselves, so the strongest (or most innovative, or well-connected) reach the top of the family hierarchy, and the weaker ones fade into obscurity, or die. She believed that this natural-selection approach would make her family stronger, which it did to an extent, but weakened the family overall, and further undermined their political stability. The most successful of her daughters got stronger after the Unix Wars, but destroyed the livelihoods, or even lives of the less successful.

Mac OSX Leopard

An exception to this attitude is the interest she showed in Leopard-tan when she was born; Leopard being the first Mac OSX version to be granted the Single Unix Specification. Knowing that she would become a time-traveler who would eagerly pledge loyalty to the Unix Family; UNIX, in a rare act of philanthropy towards any of her descendants, gave funding for Leopard's research project that would become her time machine. After the time machine was built, UNIX hired her to travel through time and ensure survival of the Unix Family to maintain a stable time loop. Leopard-tan caught onto this, and didn't take kindly to the thought of being used.

History and Background

In 1969, Unix was created from Multics' genes by Bell Labs; GECOS, who was present at her creation later acted as her mentor. While working in the laboratory's patent office she discovered Multics' existence and was smart enough to figure out they shared a relation. Unix was initially curious but whenever she inquired about her she was told unfavourable things; that Multics was dangerously unstable and mad with ambition, and that the sooner she was vanquished the better it would be. She slowly grew to resent and fear her mother and was sent away from the Labs in 1971, under orders to defeat Multics.

Unix first tried eliciting the help of other like-minded OS-tans, but was rejected – the only thing worse than Multics, in their mind, was this unknown trying to stir up trouble. Disheartened she attempted attacking Multics by herself, but was easy averted by the older woman's strength. Not able to match Multics in terms of power, she turned to plotting ingenuity to bring Multics down to her level; but this backfired and she was nearly killed by Multics out of spite. During this altercation a part of Multics psionic energy was transferred to Unix, who used those powers to successfully cut through unsuspecting Multics' defenses and brutally attack her.

In the 1970s Unix saw her first children created; among these, BSD and a panoply of lesser-known offspring. While Unix had originally been strongly anti-corporate and anti-proprietary – opting, instead, for a philosophy of freedom and self-determination – the direction of her company turned her slowly away from her bohemian roots and into a capitalist businesswoman. As her power and influence grew, conservative and free-spirited OS-tans alike rallied against her; but it was too late, Unix was too powerful. She and her family demolished many of these critics and destroyed ancient and long-held customs and cultures across the land.

During the mid 1980s, infighting spread among Unix cultures in an attempt to secure factional supremacy and a unified society; this sparked the Unix Wars, years of relentless attrition that nearly destroyed the Unixes from within. FreeBSD, drafted into the war, defected to form her own faction; likewise, Plan 9 – Unix's heir – abdicated the thrown. By the early 1990s, Linux, a young but powerful Unix-like was universally loathed by the Unix-tans, who believed she would bring further instability – and a possible death blow – to their kind. Unlike the others, Unix saw Linux as their potential salvation; together they formed a mutually beneficial alliance that lasts to this day. Unix has returned to her roots for the most part and is happier because of it.

Theories and notes

See also:

• Wikipedia article on Unix
• Wikipedia article on the Unix philosophy