I’ve built a virtual museum with nearly every operating system you can think of

a1o

Do you have that Windows 3.1 version that came with the Compaq that had the DE that was like a paper folder instead of an empty desktop, and that you could put the icons in the different tabs of the paper folder?

AnimalMuppet

Wow. That was a bit of nostalgia, just to read some of the names.

newer_vienna

Is TempleOS in here?

pfcd

Also might be of interest: http://www.typewritten.org/

ChrisArchitect

Blog post: https://andreww591.blogspot.com/2026/05/ive-released-virtual...

SkiFire13

Is there a way to see a list of the operating systems included without having to download and run the tool?

theYipster

This is awesome.

eichin

I hadn't realized Domain/OS emulation was viable these days. It's one of the few systems that has actually "lost" features - the terminal-window-like thing (called pads, I think?) when in line mode had a dividing line at the bottom where your unconsumed typeahead was visible and you could continue to edit it until it got read - not just one line, the entire unconsumed input. (Not that it's a particularly desirable feature - it's just one that I'm pretty sure you can't implement with ptys...)

Teever

Very neat to see this project come to completion Andreww. Are there any any operating systems that you'd like to add to the collection but haven't been able to find? Maybe someone here at HN could help with that.

sdbillin

Could really do with a torrent. 120GB at 3MB/sec...

nlitsme

quite a decent collection. and actual working osses. one that i noticed missing: Novell Netware, I spent several years in de 90s developing software for it. It was the main office network server software on those days. 3.x, 4.x ran on relatively regular 32-bit PC server hardware. 2.x ran on the 80286 in protected mode, the only OS I know which did that. Copies can be found at archive.org.

liquidise

This triggered a rabbit hole search that had me rediscover Packard Bell Navigator[1]. The nostalgia and joy this page brings me is hard to describe. I hope everyone remembers their formative tech journey so fondly. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packard_Bell_Navigator

prettyjosn

This is great

TrackerFF

Just a couple of years ago I worked for a client who had a computer with Solaris 2.x running. It was quite a critical piece in the system.

cf100clunk

Hug of death? Error code 522 on downloads.

neilv

Impressive curation effort. One comment: at least a few of the examples in the gallery seem to be of the "last, greatest" version, which actually isn't necessarily the greatest, and definitely not the most interesting. For example, the "Domain_OS SR10.4 - 01 VUE desktop" is a bit confusing, and may cause people to miss actual DomainOS. Apollo DomainOS (or Domain/IX, or simply Domain) had many unique and interesting things about it, but disappeared soon after being acquired by HP. It looked more like it might look if you took a programmer who had mostly only seen text terminals, and gave them a megapixel display with pixel framebuffer, a mouse, and the freedom to design the keyboard hardware, and told them to make what they would want to use. VUE (around when the Unix workstation vendors collaborated on standarding on a common desktop environment) was for HP-UX , which was a very different operating system, and entirely different user experience. More of an early attempt at let's give non-power-users an accessible computer with virtual desktops and everything. Similarly, Solaris had innovative OpenWindows (including but not limited to a networkable display system based on PostScript) before they got the common desktop environment. SunOS 4.x (retronym "Solaris 1.x") and earlier could run the earlier SunView environment, which was more like monochrome early Mac than the later Open Look look and feel of OpenWindows.

delichon

I don't see HAL or WOPR or Skynet or GLaDOS.

dchftcs

I'd love to go back to the 90s and live it again.

kramit1288

quite impressive, how did you collected? just find images online or you actually have all of these OS.

erickhill

The rarest possible choice for Amiga (Amiga UNIX) represented. Curious thing to do. Fun project site either way.