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Life & fun · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to A portfolio website simulating a 90s Unix computer using React

Heya, I’m working on a portfolio website simulating a 90’s UNIX style computer using React and ThreeJS. The style is mostly inspired by SerenityOS, macOS and compromised I had to make to get it to work well within a browser. :ˆ) I appreciate any feedback or suggestions.

A portfolio website built with React and ThreeJS that mimics a 1990s Unix computer interface. The design draws inspiration from SerenityOS and macOS, adapted for web browsers. Visitors interact with a retro desktop… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. A portfolio website simulating a 90s Unix computer using React launched in 2024; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1AP
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  3. 3
    21st.dev▲1,211

    I originally built this app to organize and reuse interesting React + Tailwind components I came across on Twitter, inspired by the shadcn/ui approach. Later, a friend started contributing their own components, and it got me thinking—this could grow into something bigger, like an NPM for design engineers to share and use components. Would love to hear your thoughts!

    2025 · 21st.dev · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    https://lisagui.com/info.html This is a web OS I wrote in vanilla JS that looks like the Apple Lisa Office System (1983-85), with other contemporaneous influences and additional improvements and features. It's currently in alpha and isn't remotely bug free. I had been holding off on posting this here until it was somewhat presentable and useful. Please note; the Lisa conforms more literally to the desktop metaphor than most modern GUIs - some of the important differences are mentioned in the readme. This is a complete recreation of the UI in JS; it all renders to a single…

    2025 · alpha.lisagui.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    Turn a design from any website into your own

    2024 · its alternatives →

  6. 6
    Hyper 3▲643

    A cross-platform terminal powered by web technologies

    2019 · hyper.is · its alternatives →

  7. 7AV

    I made this because building UIs in a lexical medium like code is super annoying. I have to pre-render what I’m making in my head, and then jump between the browser and IDE to test. I was inspired by the developer console in chrome and safari since I end up editing css there because it’s ironically more convenient. Hope it’s useful!

    2022 · dev.aspect.app · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    Many JS libraries exist to build graphs on the web (Vega, chartJS, Plotly...). They allow to make charts quickly. But you lose flexibility: you're limited by the options they offer. I just created a gallery with hundreds of graphs made with d3.js and React. - Examples are split by graph types - They all come with explanation and code sandboxes - Gradual complexity to ease the learning curve It took me ages to create this project! Feedback welcome!

    2023 · react-graph-gallery.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    Looking at websites such as Clerk, I began thinking that design engineers might be some kind of wizards. I wanted to understand how they do it, so I started reverse-engineering their components out of curiosity. One thing led to another, and I ended up building a small library of reusable, animated components based on what I found. The library is built in React and Framer Motion. I’d love to hear your feedback

    2025 · reverseui.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    Vivek Patel's (vivek9patel) Personal Portfolio Website. Made with Ubuntu 20.4 (Linux) theme by Next.js and Tailwind CSS.

    2021 · vivek9patel.github.io · its alternatives →

  11. 11IR

    After 25 years of writing software, I was feeling nostalgic for the kinds of things that got me into programming in the first place: the old DOS demoscene. I spent a weekend seeing if I could recapture some of that INT 13H VGA magic using today's web tech, but with the old-school constraints of doing it from scratch. The result is this portfolio of ten classic effects running in a single HTML file. It's all vanilla JavaScript writing to a element, with no external libraries. It was a fun challenge to implement things like: * The color palette cycling and smooth fading in the Plasma demo. *…

    2025 · jdfio.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    A guide to using React for designers

    2019 · react.dev · its alternatives →

  13. 13IM

    I made this site using R3F (https://github.com/pmndrs/react-three-fiber), a React renderer for 3JS (https://threejs.org/). The celestial bodies are Three.JS meshes. I used loaders (namely 'useLoader' from R3F and 'GLTFLoader' from 3JS) to import 3D models, such as International Space Station. More on loading models in R3F: https://docs.pmnd.rs/react-three-fiber/tutorials/loading-mod... I've future plans for this side project. It would be great to hear from the HN community before diving into them. Enjoy! P.S: Getting an empty…

    2022 · spaceinbrowser.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    Course for building a React site using components

    2018 · designcode.io · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    Author here. This is an attempt to simplify frontend development: 1. Standards first: User interfaces should be assembled with HTML, styled with CSS, and enhanced with JavaScript. 2. Less abstractions: UI composition should be easy and require as few idioms and abstractions as possible, both on client and server. 3. Design Systems: Design should be a separate subsystem, easily accessible for developers who care about and understand design. 4. Scalability: Complex UIs should retain simplicity as the application grows. Eager to hear your thoughts!

    2025 · nuejs.org · its alternatives →

  16. 16IM

    Hi! I made a React compatibility library for a Virtual DOM library (https://github.com/aidenybai/million). The idea is to have much faster rendering (a compiler optimizes virtual DOM beforehand) while ensuring the same developer experience React provides. This is very, VERY early stage, so be prepared for weird bugs / plugin incompatibility / etc. If you have any suggestions, I'd be more than happy if you replied in a comment with it! You can spin up the demo here >> https://stackblitz.com/github/aidenybai/million-react-compat

    2022 · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    Interactive portfolio by Wessel — explore a 3D retro desk with a working Windows 98 desktop. Projects, files, and newsletter inside.

    Sep 2026 · wesselsdesktop.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18UG

    Hi all, I'm currently working on my hobby project, and one of the fun constraints I put in was to build using as less dependencies as possible. I chose Go as it has a really good standard library, and all went well for building backend. But for frontend, I was wondering whether I should break the constraint and go for React. I tried options like Web Components, but I really didn't like the ergonomics and I didn't want to use jQuery either. Out of curiosity, I was exploring Go's html/template package to see if I can write UIs in a React-like manner. I found most of the online docs using…

    2024 · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    A fully interactive, Mac-like experience directly in browser

    Nov 2025 · hargunpreet.vercel.app · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    Inspiring designers with 90's websites

    2015 · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    Hi HN! I created this lib in the need of a simple and tiny framework to easily do AJAX-style navigation / replacement of fragments in the page, in a web application. For people who don't want to use client-side-rendering and complex frameworks à la React, there are nowadays a few "HTML-over-the-wire" libraries, like HTMX, Unpoly or this super-tiny one Swap.js :) One other key thing is that no external tool is needed: no bundler, no webpack, no TypeScript compiler, no minification needed. Just write HTML, JS (+ your preferred server-side language: PHP, Python, etc.) and it works. The…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    A blog and Portfolio CMS built with Rails, React, Redux, Material-UI, CSS Modules. - tsurupin/portfolio

    2016 · github.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23WX

    I geek out on any UI from the 2000s, so I built my personal site to look and feel like Windows XP. Made this two years ago to get better at React. My goal was to fool my dad into thinking he was actually using Windows XP and it seemed to work. No mobile version (yet) :( If you think it's cool you can check out the somewhat outdated code: https://github.com/SohailSayed/winxp-personal-website

    2025 · sohailsayed.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    Modern React Portfolio for Developers & Designers

    2025 · nextgenportfoliotemplate.netlify.app · its alternatives →

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