Revisiting the past: A joyful reunion with my first Linux distro at the Virtual OS Museum

["Every so often, a Linux project comes to my attention that makes me rejoice over this amazing operating system and how far it's come. One such initiative that recently caught my eye is the Virtual OS Museum, a fascinating collection of vintage operating systems that can be run using VirtualBox.", 'The Virtual OS Museum offers a unique opportunity to explore the evolution of operating systems, from early mainframes to home computers. With VirtualBox, users can download a zipped file, unzip it, and run the executable to access a Debian Linux instance.

From there, they can select from a vast list of operating systems to run. I downloaded the Lite version of the Virtual OS Museum, which is significantly smaller than the full version, and was blown away by the ease of use and the sheer number of operating systems available.', "The Virtual OS Museum's purpose is clear: to provide a platform for users to explore historical OSes and platforms without the hassle of configuring and installing emulators and OSes. As the museum's creators note, 'Want to see the earliest resident monitors?

The ancestor of all modern OSes (CTSS)? The earliest versions of Unix? The first OS with a desktop-metaphor GUI (Xerox Star, Pilot/ViewPoint)?

Early versions of mainstream OSes? If you want to explore historical OSes and platforms without having to worry about configuring/installing emulators and OSes or corrupting emulated installations, you've come to the right place.'", 'The museum offers an incredible range of operating systems, including Amiga, Apple I/II/III, Atari, Avigo, Commodore 64, Cray, DEC Alpha, Einstein, Game Boy Advance, GE 200, HP 3000, IBM 1130, iPod touch, Jupiter Ace, Lisa, Macintosh, MIPS-based SBCs, Neo, Newton, NeXT, NORC, Palm, and many more. For Linux enthusiasts, the museum offers early versions of Debian and its derivatives, Red Hat and its derivatives, early Slackware, and more.

I was particularly excited to run Caldera OpenLinux, which was my first Linux distribution, and it brought back fond memories of 1997.', 'The Virtual OS Museum comes in two editions: full and lite. The full edition is a substantial 174GB and includes everything needed to run these old-school operating systems, while the Lite version is a more manageable 14GB and requires an internet connection to download the full OS image. While you may not use one of these defunct operating systems as your daily driver, seeing them in action is a blast from the past.

With so many operating systems to explore, I could see myself spending hours with this fun project.', "The creator of the Virtual OS Museum also has a YouTube channel where they showcase installations of various OSes. If you're nostalgic for the good old days of operating systems, I highly recommend giving this wonderful tool a try. The Virtual OS Museum is compatible with Linux, MacOS, and Windows, and the only requirement is a VirtualBox installation.