A single Linux VM ships 1,700+ pre-installed OSes from 1948 to present, with bundled QEMU/VirtualBox/UTM and a custom launcher with snapshot/revert support.
Key Takeaways
Covers 570+ distinct OSes across 250+ platforms: mainframes (CTSS, Multics, MVS), Unix workstations (IRIX, NeXTSTEP, A/UX), home computers, mobile (PalmOS, Newton, early Android/iOS), and research systems (Plan 9, Oberon).
Full version ships all images offline; lite version fetches guest disk/tape images on first run. Both support automatic and manual updates without re-downloading the whole VM.
Launcher includes snapshot feature to revert broken installs; some emulators were patched to handle regressions or run on modern Linux.
Project is one person, 20+ years of collecting; some installs took nearly a week, and several required specific older emulator versions.
Hacker News Comment Review
Commenters flagged missing systems: Pick OS and TempleOS were called out, and a few questioned whether a full OS list is browsable without downloading the VM.
Domain/OS prompted the most technical depth: one commenter noted its unique unconsumed-typeahead visible editing in line mode, a feature lost in later systems and not replicated by modern PTY defaults.
Gallery curation was mildly critiqued for showing late versions of some OSes rather than the historically distinctive earlier releases.
Notable Comments
@drewg123: Requests a browsable OS list without requiring a download, a gap the project does not currently address.
