If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to use the many operating systems that Apple (and NeXT) have released over the past 40 years, The virtual museum of the operating system has you covered, and then some. Here are the details.
‘Over 1,700 installations, representing more than 250 different platforms and more than 600 different operating systems’
How he saw it BoingBoingThe Virtual OS Museum is a project by developer Andrew Warkentin, offering a way to run more than 1,700 preinstalled operating systems and standalone applications under emulation, covering more than 250 platforms and approximately 600 different operating systems from 1948 to the present.
The project is available in two editions: a full 121GB download (174GB unzipped), with everything previously downloaded for offline use, and a lighter 14GB download (21GB unzipped), which downloads guest VM images the first time they are run.
Or, like The virtual museum of the operating system it puts it:
Both a full and a light version are available. The full version comes with everything previously downloaded and runs offline. The lite version downloads disks/tapes/etc. images for guest virtual machines the first time they are run. Both editions support automatic and manual updates, so new installations are performed without having to download the entire virtual machine again.
Warkentin says that The virtual museum of the operating system “It is the result of more than 20 years of collecting, starting when he began collecting emulator images in 2003, a time when there were only a few small image files and software documentation available.
Here’s something you can do hope to find:
- The first mainframe computers: Manchester Baby test/demo programs, Mark 1 Scheme A/B/C/T (early examples of system software that could be considered an operating system), 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 OS, SunOS, IRIX, OSF/1, A/UX, NeXTSTEP, Plan 9, various BSDs, plus Linux distributions over the decades and more
- Home computers– Various variants of CP/M, 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 variants of DOS, OS/2, BeOS, Windows from 1.0 to early Longhorn betas, classic Mac OS up to Mac OS X 10.5 PPC, and more
- Mobile and integrated: PalmOS, EPOC/Symbian, Windows CE, Newton OS, the first Android and iOS where emulation allows, QNX, etc.
- Research and dark systems.: ZetaLisp, Smalltalk environments, Oberon, Plan 9 and many more that few people have ever started.
As Warkentin points out on the project website, not all emulated systems are guaranteed to behave perfectly. The project is still described as a preview version, and some operating systems only run on specific emulator versions.
Additionally, the host VM is currently x86-only, “so if you’re on ARM or any other non-x86 platform, performance will be quite limited.” This means that performance on Apple Silicon Macs may not be the best. Still, this is an infinitely interesting project.
Be sure to check OS Virtual Museum websitewhich offers download links, quick start instructions for macOS, Windows, and Linux, a full list of included installations, and screenshots of several systems already running.
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