Virtual OS Museum launches archive of 1,700 historical operating systems

The Virtual OS Museum has launched, offering digital access to more than 1,700 historical operating systems and standalone applications. Spanning from the Manchester Baby of 1948 to the present day, the collection aims to preserve the history of stored-program computing by providing ready-to-run configurations for both well-known and obscure platforms.

The project is packaged as a Linux virtual machine compatible with QEMU, VirtualBox, and UTM. It features a custom emulator-independent launcher and pre-installed, pre-configured emulators, including patches to resolve regressions in later versions or ensure compatibility with modern Linux environments. This approach addresses the complexity often associated with software preservation, where installations may require specific host environments or device configurations.

Two distribution formats are available to users. The full offline version ships with all content pre-downloaded, while the 'lite' version downloads disk and tape images for guest virtual machines upon first run. Both editions support automatic and manual updates, allowing new installations to be added without requiring a complete re-download of the virtual machine.

The curator, who began collecting emulator images in 2003, has spent over two years sourcing and configuring the archive. Installations were sourced from various origins, including pre-installed images and original media. While some configurations took less than an hour, others required up to a week to set up correctly. The collection includes significant historical milestones such as the CTSS, early Unix versions, and the Xerox Star Pilot/ViewPoint.

Currently a personal project sustained by the curator’s time and effort, the initiative remains far from finished. The curator notes that many more images are yet to be installed and emulators require further fixes. The project seeks to move beyond theoretical reachability, ensuring that users can click an entry and run it with era-appropriate software loaded as it might have been used historically.