Altimit OS

Altimit OS

Developer	Altimit Corporation
OS family	Altimit OS
Working state	Internal Alpha
Source model	Unique (Fictional)
Latest release	Altimit Mine OS / Fictional: 2017 Actual: Unknown
Kernel type	Unknown, presumed unique

Altimit OS is a fictional OS in universe of the .hack series. Altimit is portrayed as a very stable OS, described as "Virtually immune to all viruses". As such, Altimit OS was the only OS unaffected by the fictional Pluto's Kiss virus, which caused widespread cyber-chaos and rendered Altimit the only practically usable OS, the catalyst for the .hack universe's stories. Altimit OS also runs The World, the only surviving MMORPG.

By the year 2017, Altimit OS has been replaced by Altimit Mine OS.

Altimit OS was supposedly created by Altimit Corporation, with headquarters in San Francisco, California, USA.

In 2005, a company began development of ALTIMIT OS. The plan was to make a real-life version of the operating system inspired by the .hack// series and games. The OS was being developed under linux and got as far as a stable Internal Alpha ready for public Beta testing. After several months of speaking with Bandai and its copyright office, the company received Bandai's permission for the project, and later changed the company name to Altimit Corporation.

In the first few weeks of 2007, ALTIMIT Corp. hired a new coder by the name of Dark. Shortly after Dark joined the team, the original project was scrapped. The company CEO and Dark decided not to use linux for ALTIMIT, and to code the OS from scratch. Progress can be found at the ALTIMIT OS Official Website.

The World

In the .hack universe, The World, the 'killer app' or most popular application on Altimit OS (Indeed, the only game seen on it) was released in December 2007. The World was the first online game available ever since the Pluto's Kiss incident. Millions of copies were downloaded the first month alone. By 2010, more than 20 million players joined the game.

The World began its life as a prototype called Fragment. With time, it evolved into The World. Some Altimit OS programmers quit their jobs in Altimit to join the development crew of The World. Later, the CyberConnect Corporation (CC Corp.) was founded. This company later released the game and manages content.

Known Features

Although The World (a native Altimit OS application) is a full 3D-world that immerses the gamer into the gameplay, no VR-gloves are used, just gamepads.

Altimit OS is seen to run on a variety of platforms, presumably built to run it after the Pluto's Kiss incident.

A basic Altimit OS includes a Mail reader.

As seen in .hack//Liminality, a larger IP address space is used by The World, and other Altimit OS applications, with addresses like 295.252.352.436.325 supported. IP can be assumed to have been re-written, as Altimit OS is the only OS in the .hack world, and after the destruction caused by Pluto's Kiss it is likely that a more secure IP would be developed to at least make future events more unlikely.

The real version of ALTIMIT OS is following these feature, but are adding more for functionality. Some unique features to the OS include a default wallpaper that can be set to any hue a user desires, an animated sidedock that holds shortcuts to applications developed by Altimit Corp., integrated browser, mail client, and an animated logo that is used to replace the start bar.

Hardware

Altimit OS might run in a RISC-class evolved hardware, similar (in some way) to the G3, G4 and G5 Amiga and Macintosh computers or something like the new SPARC processors from Sun. The most common display devices in use are Widescreen Flat Panels, with VR Helmets used in The World. It can be played without the helmet.

Other devices include wireless optical mice, keyboards, VR Helmets and gamepads.

Currently, the real version of ALTIMIT OS is designed to run on PowerPC, x86, and x64 architectures. The operating system also supports bios motherboards, as well as the more modern EFI based motherboards,

Remarks

The idea of a single, secure and universal OS has been attempted several times in computer history. Some include Freedows, JNode or JavaOS.

Nevertheless, the underlying philosophy of Altimit OS is a mix of past, present, and (likely) future operating systems. Some GUI concepts are drawn from Open Source desktop environments, such as GNOME or KDE. GUI "eye candy" effects are very close to the Aqua engine found in Mac OS X incarnations (icon animation and resizing). The simplicity of the desktop is reminiscent of the now discontinued BeOS.

In short, Altimit OS could be what the Project .hack authors consider "the perfect OS" (A theory backed up by its name, Al-ti-mit which is basically word play of the word 'ultimate'), a computer utopia that cannot be reached with current hardware and software designs.

External Links

• Altimit OS at .hack//Wiki
• Fans trying to an Altimit linux theme for KDE and GNOME (project dead)
• Official Development Site of ALTIMIT OS