The project for creating a virtual museum of operating systems has been presented, featuring a collection of over 570 operating systems. The museum is designed as a virtual machine image with Linux, a selection of emulators, and an integrated graphical interface for navigating the available collection. Users can experience each operating system live by launching it in an emulator. The museum is built on a collection of emulators gathered by the project author since 2003.
Two versions are available for download: a full version (121 GB zip), which includes the entire collection of approximately 1700 operating systems covering over 250 platforms and 570 OS, and a trimmed version (14 GB) that contains only the Linux system, an installer, a set of emulators, and a graphical application for dynamically loading selected operating system images. Virtual machine loading is supported in QEMU, VirtualBox, and UTM. of virtual machinesAll elements of the collection are pre-configured and ready for introductory use. Rolling back environments with tested operating systems to their initial state is supported to restore functionality in case the system is damaged during experimentation. The graphical application, scripts, and metadata are distributed under the CC-BY-NC-SA license, allowing for non-commercial use.
The earliest item in the collection is dated 1948 (the Manchester Baby computer). Available for testing are also:
Scheme A — the first OS released in 1951.
- IBM IBSYS, 1410 OS and 1410 POS, the first OS from IBM, created between 1960 and 1971.
- B5000 MCP — the first OS in a high-level language.
- CTSS — the first multi-user OS (1961-72).
- Multics — the first OS with a hierarchical file system (1964), a precursor to Unix.
- Various early versions of Unix (PDP-7 Unix ‘V0’, PDP-11 Unix V1).
- Operating systems for mainframes.
- Xerox Alto OS and Smalltalk (1976-81) — the first OS for workstations and the first window graphical interface.
- Xerox ViewPoint/GlobalView — the first graphical interface with a desktop concept.
- Visi On (1983) — the first GUI for PCs.
- Various editions of CP/M and DOS.
- Apple Lisa OS (1983-84) — the first graphical OS from Apple, along with various early versions of Mac OS and NeXTStep.
- Pre-releases of older Windows OS.
- EPOC, Palm OS — OS for the first pocket PCs.
- Linux distributions from the 1990s and 2000s.
- Early versions of Android (2007-11).
- Operating systems developed by enthusiasts.
- Release of Firefox 151
Source: opennet.ru
