The Virtual OS Museum: Over 1,700 Vintage Operating Systems Now Available for Download
Developer Andrew Warkentin has released The Virtual OS Museum, an ambitious project providing access to over 1,700 pre-installed operating systems and standalone applications through emulation. The collection spans more than 250 platforms and approximately 600 distinct operating systems, ranging from 1948 to the present.
The museum covers more than 250 platforms and approximately 600 distinct operating systems from 1948 to the present.
Two Editions Available
The project is offered in two versions to accommodate different storage and bandwidth capabilities:
- Full version: 121 GB download (174 GB unzipped), with all content pre-downloaded for offline use.
- Lite version: 14 GB download (21 GB unzipped), which downloads guest VM images on first run.
Both editions support automatic and manual updates.
A Vast Collection Across Computing History
Early Mainframes
- Manchester Baby, Mark 1, EDSAC software
Later Mainframes and Minicomputers
- CTSS, MVS, VM/370, TOPS-10/20, ITS, Multics, RSX, RSTS
Workstations and Unix Variants
- PERQ OSes, SunOS, IRIX, OSF/1, A/UX, NeXTSTEP, Plan 9, various BSDs, and Linux distributions
Home Computers
- CP/M variants, Apple II, Commodore 8-bit, Atari 8-bit, MSX, Tandy TRS-80, BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum, Sharp MZ
Personal Computer Operating Systems
- DOS variants, OS/2, BeOS, Windows (1.0 to early Longhorn betas), classic Mac OS through Mac OS X 10.5 PPC
Mobile and Embedded
- PalmOS, EPOC/Symbian, Windows CE, Newton OS, early Android and iOS where emulation permits, QNX
Research and Obscure Systems
- ZetaLisp, Smalltalk environments, Oberon
Important Caveats
Warkentin notes that the project is a preliminary release; some operating systems may only run in specific emulator versions. The host VM is currently x86-only, so performance on ARM platforms (e.g., Apple Silicon) will be limited.