The Virtual OS Museum

This is a virtual museum of operating systems (and standalone applications)<br>running under emulation, implemented as a Linux VM for QEMU, VirtualBox, or UTM.

A custom emulator-independent launcher is provided, and all OSes and emulators<br>are pre-installed and pre-configured. The launcher includes a snapshot feature to quickly revert broken installations back to a working state. Hypervisor installers and shortcuts to run the VM on Windows, macOS, and Linux are also included.

Want to see the earliest resident monitors? The ancestor of all modern OSes (CTSS)? The earliest versions of Unix? The first OS with a desktop metaphor GUI (Xerox Star Pilot/ViewPoint)? Early versions of mainstream OSes? If you want to explore historical OSes and platforms without having to worry about configuring/installing emulators and OSes or corrupting emulated installations, you’ve come to the right place.

Just about every well-known OS and platform (and also a lot of obscure ones) is included in some form, spanning the entire history of stored-program computing from the Manchester Baby of 1948 (the first stored-program computer) to the present day.

The catalogue covers, among many other things:

The earliest mainframes : Manchester Baby test/demo programs, Mark 1 Scheme A/B/C/T (the earliest examples of system software that could be considered as an OS), various EDSAC software, etc.

Later mainframes and minicomputers : CTSS, MVS, VM/370, TOPS-10/20, ITS, Multics, RSX, RSTS, and more

Workstations and Unix variants : PERQ OSes, SunOS, IRIX, OSF/1, A/UX, NeXTSTEP, Plan 9, various BSDs, plus Linux distributions across the decades, and more

Home computers : various CP/M variants, Apple II, Commodore 8-bit machines, Atari 8-bit, MSX, Tandy TRS-80, BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum, Sharp MZ, and more

Personal computer operating systems : various DOS variants, OS/2, BeOS, Windows from 1.0 to early Longhorn betas, classic Mac OS through Mac OS X 10.5 PPC, and more

Mobile and embedded : PalmOS, EPOC/Symbian, Windows CE, Newton OS, early Android and iOS where emulation permits, QNX, etc.

Research and obscure systems : ZetaLisp, Smalltalk environments, Oberon, Plan 9, and many more that few people now have ever booted

If a working version of an operating system exists somewhere, the goal is to have it here, in a form anyone can run on a reasonably modern laptop/desktop.

By the Numbers

1700+<br>installs

250+<br>platforms

570+<br>distinct oses

1948-now<br>era

Downloads

Both a full and a lite version are available. The full version ships with everything pre-downloaded and runs offline. The lite version downloads disk/tape/etc. images for guest VMs the first time they are run. Automatic and manual updates are supported on both editions so new installations land without re-downloading the whole VM.

Download the Virtual OS Museum

Screenshots

0. Launcher main window<br>1. Launcher VM info<br>2. Unix PC SVR2 and XVM RSX<br>AFROS (XaAES) 8.12 - 00 TeraDesk<br>AO-DOS 2.10 - 00 Intro<br>ATT Unix PC System V R2 3.51m - 00 File Manager and Terminal<br>A_UX 3.1.1 - 00 Finder with utilities<br>Amiga UNIX (AMIX) 2.1c - 00 OpenLook desktop with applications<br>CP_M for PSI98 2.2 (6.31-Z) - 00 DIR<br>CSIDOS 3.32 - 00 Intro<br>Coherent 4.2.14 - 00 olwm with applications<br>Domain_OS SR10.4 - 01 VUE desktop<br>E_OS LX 0.2.5 - 00 Terminal<br>FlexOS 2.3 (COROS LS-B 4.01) - 03 About<br>GNO_ME 2.0.6 - 01 TMTerm<br>HP-UX 11i v1 (B.11.11) - 00 CDE with utilities<br>Human68K 3.02 - 00 LHES<br>IBM 1130 DMS V2M12 - 00 LET listing<br>IBM OS_2 (Extended Edition) 1.1 - 00 Desktop Manager<br>IRIX 6.5.22m - 00 IMD with applications<br>Inferno Fourth Edition (20100115) - 00 GUI with applications<br>LisaOS 3.1 - 02 LisaDraw<br>MOS for BBC Master Compact 5.10 (Base) - 02 Desktop<br>Mac OS (Classic) 1.0 alpha; Sony Test (System '7.0', Finder 1983-10-04) - 00 Finder<br>Mac OS 9.0.4 - 00 Finder, Internet Explorer,and Help<br>Mach386 2.6 1.0 (X108_MSD) - 00 X11 with applications<br>Minerva 1.98 (QL_E (shares disk images with SMSQ_E QL_E)) - 00 Desktop with applications<br>Minix 3.4.0rc6 - 00 X11 Terminal and Links<br>NeXTStep (68k) 3.3 - 00 Desktop with applications<br>OS-9_x86 (a.k.a. OS-9000_x86) 6.1 - 00 XiBase<br>PSI-OS 12.2 - 00 Start<br>Plan 9 4th Edition - 01 acme filesystem server<br>QNX 1.2 - 00 boot<br>RISC OS 3.11 (Minimal (Old boot)) - 00 Desktop with applications<br>SILLIAC software collection - 00 Blob demo<br>SINIX (PC-X) 1.2 - 01 Login Prompt<br>SX-WINDOW 3.1 - 00 Desktop<br>Sharp Personal CP_M for MZ-2500 (MZ-6Z001) 1.0a - 00 VCCP<br>Softlanding Linux System 1.0 - 00 ls uname and kernel source<br>Solaris_SPARC 9 (s9_58shwpl3) - 00 CDE terminal help and file manager<br>Syllable 0.5.2 - 00 Desktop with applications<br>SymbOS 1.0 Beta - 01 About<br>Tru64 UNIX 5.1B - 00 CDE with utilities<br>ULTRIX_VAX 4.0 - 00 DECwindows with applications<br>UNICOS 10.0.0.2 - 01 X11 with utilities

More screenshots

Why this exists

While the state of software preservation has improved significantly over the past two decades, many of the existing software preservation projects are still not...