Have you ever been curious about what vintage computers were like? This virtual museum allows you to explore hundreds of them.

      The Virtual OS Museum is a delightful journey into computing history.

      If you think that all current operating systems appear overly polished, flat, and dull, a new museum will take you on a trip through vintage computing. The Virtual OS Museum, curated by Andrew Warkentin, offers an interactive experience featuring operating systems and standalone applications that run through emulation.

      This isn’t simply a collection of static images of retro software. Instead, the museum functions as a Linux virtual machine for QEMU, VirtualBox, or UTM, equipped with a custom launcher and preconfigured installations designed to boot up without requiring users to navigate outdated setup files and emulator configurations manually.

      Vintage OS Museum

      An interactive archive of computing history

      Currently, the Virtual OS Museum features over 1,700 installations, more than 250 platforms, and around 570 unique operating systems, ranging from the Manchester Baby in 1948 to more recent historical software. The collection includes early mainframe systems, CTSS, early Unix, Xerox Star Pilot/ViewPoint, classic MacOS, DOS, OS/2, BeOS, Windows from version 1.0 to early Longhorn betas, PalmOS, Newton OS, early Android, iOS where emulation is feasible, and numerous obscure systems that most people have never encountered.

      This is more of a playable history lesson than a mere nostalgia trip, aimed at anyone curious about the evolution of modern computing.

      It’s very user-friendly

      Virtual OS Museum

      The museum exists because running old software can often be a challenge. Some operating systems are compatible only with certain emulator versions, while others require patched emulators or can take days to rebuild from original media. Warkentin's goal is to make this history "accessible." Users can select an entry and run it with the software from that era already prepared, where possible.

      There is, however, a small caveat. The Virtual OS Museum isn’t browser-based. The full version is a substantial 121GB zipped download, expanding to 174GB when extracted (still lighter than Black Ops 7). Fortunately, a lighter version is available, which is a 14GB zipped file that downloads images as needed.

      Vikhyaat Vivek is a tech journalist and reviewer with seven years of experience focused on consumer hardware.

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