I’m glad to be reunited with my first Linux distro at the Virtual OS Museum

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ZDNET Highlights

• The Virtual OS Museum gives you a glimpse of OSes of yesteryear.
• You can run one of hundreds of operating systems.
• All you need is VirtualBox to implement this free tool.

From time to time, a Linux project comes to my attention that makes me delight in this wonderful operating system and how far it has come.

One such initiative – which was brought to my attention recently – really surprised me. it is called Virtual OS Museum.

With VirtualBox, this museum lets you run different operating systems that no longer exist. Essentially, what you do is download a zipped file, unzip it, rename it to the newly created directory, and run the executable. VirtualBox then opens up to a Debian Linux instance, where you can select from a very long list of operating systems to run.

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I downloaded the lite version of Virtual OS Museum (much smaller than the full version), turned it on, and then launched an instance of next step (Which was the basis for AfterStep, one of my favorite old school Linux window managers).

I was surprised by how easy this OS was to operate and the sheer number of operating systems to choose from.

The Virtual OS Museum states its purpose clearly: “Want to see early resident monitors? The progenitors of all modern OSes (CTSS)? Early versions of Unix? The first OSes with desktop-metaphor GUIs (Xerox Star, Pilot/Viewpoint)? Early versions of mainstream OSes? If you want to explore historical OSes and platforms without worrying about configuring/installing emulators or corrupting emulated installations, You’ve come to the right place.”

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Sounds like fun, right? Not only can you see how operating systems have evolved over the years, but you can also reminisce about the old days when both PCs and OSes were in their infancy.

You can run operating systems such as Amiga, Apple I/II/III, Atari, Avigo, Commodore 64, Cray, DEC Alpha, Einstein, Game Boy Advance, GE 200, HP 3000, IBM 1130, iPod Touch, Jupiter Ace, Lisa, Macintosh, MIPS-based SBCs, Neo, Newton, NeXT, NORC, Palm and many others.

You can test early mainframes, late mainframes and minicomputers, workstations and UNIX variants, home computers, personal computer operating systems, mobile and embedded AdOS, and research-based and obscure systems.

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As far as Linux is concerned, you can run early Debian and its derivatives, Red Hat and its derivatives, early Slackware, and more.

There’s also Caldera OpenLinux, which was the first Linux distribution I tried (see above). Of course, I had to play it and my face lit up because it took me back to 1997.

Lite vs Full

There are two versions of Virtual OS Museum: Full and Lite. The full version is currently 174GB and includes everything needed to run these old-school operating systems. The full version does not require a network connection to run. The Lite version is only 14GB and requires an internet connection as it downloads the full OS image you want to use.

Why would you want to use it?

It all comes down to nostalgia. You certainly wouldn’t turn on one of these defunct operating systems and use it as your daily driver, but seeing them in action (and interacting with them) is certainly a blast from the past. And considering how many operating systems are included in the Virtual OS Museum, I can see myself spending a long, long time with this fun project.

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The creator of the Virtual OS Museum has a Youtube channel Where they perform installations of various OS.

If you yearn for the good old days of operating systems (even ones that were much more challenging than the systems we have today), I highly recommend trying out this amazing tool. You can use it on Linux, MacOS, or Windows; The only requirement is VirtualBox installation. enjoy.