The Virtual OS Museum Lets You Emulate 1700+ Operating Systems From as Far Back as 1948
The Virtual OS Museum is a project that preserves over 1700 operating systems dating back to 1948. Created by Andrew Wartenkin, it allows users to explore a wide range of historical operating systems through emulation. While the museum requires some technical setup, it offers a unique glimpse into the evolution of computing.
- ▪The Virtual OS Museum features over 1700 operating systems from the history of computing.
- ▪Andrew Wartenkin has been collecting OS images for over two decades to create this repository.
- ▪Users must download and install the project on their computers to access the emulations.
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| Original publisher | Gizmodo |
| Canonical URL | https://gizmodo.com/the-virtual-os-museum-lets-you-emulate-1700-operating-systems-from-as-far-back-as-1948-2000765046 |
| Publication time | Fri, 29 May 2026 16:15:35 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-29T16:20:02.338Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-29T16:20:02.338Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
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| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
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| Cluster | QrA7Uo4MzxUq |
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| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
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Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
The history of computing is littered with the remains of forgotten operating systems—some rendered obsolete by technological progress, some that never quite captured the public imagination, and some just so aggressively useless that everyone would rather forget they ever existed. But we shouldn’t forget! And happily, there’s a new project devoted to preserving the history of all manner of strange and wonderful OSes: the Virtual OS Museum, a repository of some 1700 operating systems that date back to the dawn of computing as we know…
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