The Virtual OS Museum :)

9 to 5 Mac

How cool is this! What a gem. Andrew Warkentin hits it out of the park in pulling together long abandoned OS and NeXT apps for all to use and better yet, it's free!!!

If you’ve ever wondered what it felt like to use the many operating systems Apple (and NeXT) released over the past 40-plus years, The Virtual OS Museum has got you covered, and then some. Here are the details.

’Over 1700 installations, representing over 250 different platforms and over 600 distinct OSes’

As spotted by BoingBoing, The Virtual OS Museum is a project by developer Andrew Warkentin, which offers a way to run more than 1,700 pre-installed operating systems and standalone applications under emulation, covering more than 250 platforms and roughly 600 distinct operating systems from 1948 to the present.

The project is available in two editions: a full 121GB download (174GB unzipped), with everything pre-downloaded for offline use, and a lighter 14GB download (21GB unzipped), which downloads guest VM images the first time they are run.

Or, as The Virtual OS Museum puts it:

Both a full and a lite version are available. The full version ships with everything pre-downloaded and runs offline. The lite version downloads disk/tape/etc. images for guest VMs the first time they are run. Automatic and manual updates are supported on both editions so new installations land without re-downloading the whole VM.

Giving it all away is good karma. BRT does the same thing as well. :)