Life & fun · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to I wrote a "web OS" based on the Apple Lisa's UI, with 1-bit graphics
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…
Lisa is a web-based operating system built in vanilla JavaScript that recreates the user interface of the 1983-85 Apple Lisa Office System. Rendered entirely on a single canvas element rather than using CSS or… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
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2021 · portfolio.zxh.io · its alternatives →
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Once UI 1.5▲299When I started my career and built my first design system, I was beyond excited. It took a lot of iterations, learning and 6 months of work to launch it internally. In the next job, I did it again, then at the following job, again… And no matter which company I worked for, 80% of the design system was the same. I’ve decided to work full-time on the design system I’ve always wanted, and today I’m launching and open-sourcing it. You can use it to build Next.js apps faster, and I’ve designed it in a way that it’s hard to go wrong with it: you can choose any settings, and you’ll end up with a…
Dec 2025 · once-ui.com · its alternatives →
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21st.dev▲1,211I 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 →
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GodotOS, an operating system interface created entirely in Godot! Browse folders, edit text files, view images, play games, and more in one cohesive polished interface that can even be used on the web. Note that GodotOS is more of a toy than a serious project. It's meant to push the limits on UI design in Godot while creating a desktop that is minimalist, distraction-free, and aesthetically pleasing. Any feedback is greatly appreciated! Apologies for posting again, but I forgot to include "Show HN" in the title, and when I did post yesterday Hackernews almost immediately went down for over…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Finally got my hobby OS up and running on real hardware. I love the old IBM thinkpads, so thought it was the perfect machine to get it working on. Been working on it for quite some time now, but this has been a big milestone!
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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- 7TI
Hi HN! My name is Nick and this is my fun side project. Please lay it on me. HN can think of Tips.io as a cracked out Tailwind Playground that has page management and amazing AI integration. There are a few core ideas: 1) The HTML is the CMS There are no fields or restrictions. Just hover, click, and start tweaking any HTML. Also, certain elements you click will have special easy edit abilities: - auto creates an uploader, stock photo picker (or HTML) - auto creates an uploader, stock video picker (or HTML) - auto creates a big icon picker (or HTML) - auto creates a WYSIWYG Editor (or HTML)…
2024 · tips.io · its alternatives →
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Hello HN! I'm the author of Ant, a JavaScript ecosystem built around a runtime with its own JavaScript engine. Ant also includes a package manager, the ants.land package registry, a platform for deploying and hosting applications, and Ant Desktop for building native desktop apps with web technologies, similar to Electron. The goal is for these pieces to work as one coherent platform while remaining compatible with the wider JavaScript ecosystem. It's still early, and I'd appreciate any feedback on the overall direction or what you'd like to see from an e2e alternative to the existing…
Jul 2026 · antjs.org · its alternatives →
- 9
Hargun's MacOS▲132A fully interactive, Mac-like experience directly in browser
Nov 2025 · hargunpreet.vercel.app · its alternatives →
- 10
Not sure if I would post this for the last day of #marchintosh OR wait for tomorrow the 1st of April. Both apply equally. Anyway, here's a pet project of mine, I made it as a glued on for another pet project of mine, but it developed a life of it's own now and can soar skyward toward success, fame, and glory.
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
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A design system for building faithful recreations of the Windows 7 UI.
2025 · khang-nd.github.io · its alternatives →
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Web Components to turn your web app into a fake operating system - victorqribeiro/fos
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
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macintosh.js▲198A 1991 Macintosh in an app - for Windows, Linux, and macOS
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
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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 →
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Not really an oprating system, Just a pile of javascript pretending to be a Desktop Environment - Lerc/notanos
2013 · github.com · its alternatives →
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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.
2024 · joeyderuiter.me · its alternatives →
- 18
This is a model I’ve been thinking about lately. It demonstrates a pattern that I’m wondering could exist, where terminal applications, BBS-style shared user boards, and other expressions of creativity and sharing are created with web technologies but rendered into the terminal and accessed over SSH. I like that this brings back some kind of old days of the internet feeling and uses web technologies but sidesteps the public World Wide Web, even though it’s still on the internet. You can try it out too right now, and I’m thinking about making the self-hosting specialized applications part a…
Jul 2026 · duetbrowser.com · its alternatives →
- 19AJ
I've been building a web UI library for a side project of mine. I thought it might be useful to others, so I'm releasing it as open source. To put it simply, I realized that most of my pain points with React come from its declarative model ui=f(state). So I'm trying something that I'm calling "imperative JSX." Instead of treating JSX as the source of truth for your UI, it essentially becomes a query interface for DOM manipulation. I first had the idea for it a few months ago, and only began writing it in earnest last week, so it's extremely early and nowhere near production-ready. Still, I'd…
2024 · npmjs.com · its alternatives →
- 20IM
Try it at: ssh krnl.duetbrowser.com No sign up, totally free - no download. Let me know what you think. Prior art exists (brow.sh) but I wasn't satisfied with their graphical take. I wanted the raw, old skool terminal days of the early internet - BBS, and old green phosphor library comptuers - but running the modern web, with all the bells and jingle jangle whistles (JavaScript, etc). No funding, no VC, just 100% raw terminal fun. Not sure how long the demo will last, but try it out.
Jul 2026 · its alternatives →
- 21DO
Hi HN, I've always loved the aesthetic, quirks, and concepts of Plan9, and I wanted to see how far I could vibe-code a web desktop/OS that resembled it. The result is DWS OS. My goal was to reach a point where I could build "userspace" apps for this OS, in the OS. DWS OS has a virtual filesystem, an approximation of the ACME editor, file browser, internet browser (just an iframe for fun), and a few other apps to discover. The environment supports uploading and downloading data from the virtual filesystem, along with support for JavaScript programming within ACME and an API for building…
2025 · dws.rip · its alternatives →
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Oren Lindsey - Fullstack Web Developer
2023 · lindsey.studio · its alternatives →
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Hey HN! This is a fun/educational project I built to learn OS programming. I started working on it right after graduating high school last year and have been working on it on and off during my first year of university. It features a TCP/IP stack, an HTTP server, a RAM file system, a BIOS bootloader, paging and memory management, and concurrent tasks based on cooperative scheduling, along with a custom library. It's written in a C programming style focused on safety (based on a custom library of core abstractions) that's inspired by the writing of Chris Wellons (nullprogram.com).…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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GoWeb OS▲4An immutable, framework-free single-file Web OS prototype
Jun 2026 · go-web-os.web.app · its alternatives →
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