Life & fun · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to My self-written hobby OS is finally running on my vintage IBM ThinkPad
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!
This is a hobby operating system that has been successfully deployed on vintage IBM ThinkPad hardware. Created by an enthusiast developer, the OS represents the culmination of extended development work and has reached… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
- 1MH
Nov 2025 · astral-os.org · its alternatives →
- 2
Hello! I'm Byran. I spent the past ~6 months engineering a laptop from scratch. It's fully open-source on GH at: https://github.com/Hello9999901/laptop
2025 · byran.ee · its alternatives →
- 3AR
Software and hardware projects for fun from a guy who loves retro computing
2019 · internalregister.github.io · its alternatives →
- 4
To try it out, simply build the project yourself from source, or use attached bootable ISO image of the system (in Releases on Github) and run it in QEMU. https://blog.vxn.dev/rou2exos-rusted-edition
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 5IM
I've wanted to make my own OS since I started programming. Now, 5 years later, I did it (kind of). Sure, it is really basic, has very little functionality, but I made it and I'm proud of that. Oh, and I'm just 16 btw.
2025 · jotalea.com.ar · its alternatives →
- 6
A multitasking monolithic Kernel based x86 targeting Operating System written in C# from scratch aiming for high-level implementation of drivers in managed environment. - amaneureka/AtomOS
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 7
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 →
- 8
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 →
- 9
A while ago I was looking for information on a obscure and short lived British computer. I found an article[1] in the archives of BYTE magazine[2] - and was captivated immediately by the tech adverts of bygone eras. This led to a long side project to be able to see all 100k pages of BYTE in a single searchable place. [1]: https://byte.tsundoku.io/#198502-381 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17683184
2025 · byte.tsundoku.io · its alternatives →
- 10M4My 486 Server▲255
Hello. I wrote a multitasking 16-bit real mode "operating system" that works on every IBM PC compatible computer, and a TCP/IP stack for it. Then I wrote an HTTP server for it.
2022 · 486servu.dy.fi · its alternatives →
- 11
Hello HN, I've been working on a simple OS for tinkering and running bare metal apps on vintage PCs. Since I couldn't quite decide whether to target pure 16-bit, or slightly more capable 32-bit machines, I ended up with two separate versions: - GentleOS/32 (https://github.com/luke8086/gentleos32) works on i386+, requires 4MB of RAM and VGA display supporting 640x480x16 mode or any 256-color VESA mode. - GentleOS/16 (https://github.com/luke8086/gentleos) works on 80186+, requires less than 192KB of RAM and a CGA display supporting 320x200x4…
Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 12
Just wanted to make my first post about something interesting I've been working on for some time. Any ideas/suggestions for new hardware or software I should try out are welcome, though I will only have time for a major overhaul in a month or two where I want to redo and document everything a bit better than how it is currently. Hope this can inspire someone to start their own homelab or give some ideas to already existing ones!
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 13NP
Since it appears to be retrocomputing day on HN, I thought I'd post my pet project. It's a collection of modern peripherals for retrocomputers. I started collecting a list of upgrades for my ideal dream Mac SE/30 and grew from there. The site is currently mostly focused on Apple II and Mac stuff since that's what I grew up with.
Aug 2026 · newold.computer · its alternatives →
- 14
The 64▲106Re-imagining of the original home computer, the Commodore C6
2016 · indiegogo.com · its alternatives →
- 15
Retro Gears▲68A mix of retro, pixels and Micromachines on steroids
2016 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
- 16
GameShell▲87Open Source Retro Gaming & STEM Portable Console
2017 · kickstarter.com · its alternatives →
- 17
- 18
This project contains no code from Linux, BSD, Minix, or any other OS. Everything up until this point is written entirely from scratch, including a pure microkernel (that only implements multiprocessor priority scheduling, memory management, and interprocess communication), a work-in-progress implementation of the standard C library, and a variety of servers that provide drivers and other essential OS functionality. At the time of writing this post, the servers provide drivers for the keyboard, NVMe SSDs (that works on real hardware), a Unix-like virtual file system (with a single root…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 19FT
Hi All. I made this as an fun intro to help people who have zero IBM mainframe experience and no access to a modern IBM mainframe (at least, not access to do whatever you want with it). I appreciate tips, suggestions and anything that might improve the experience for someone who has no idea of how those machines operate(d).
Jan 2026 · rbanffy.github.io · its alternatives →
- 20
Desktop Neo, rethinking the desktop UI and Dribble Playbook
2016 · layout.fm · its alternatives →
- 21
VibeOS is a retro operating system that boots on qemu and Pi Zero 2W. I built this with Claude code in about 4 weeks.
Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 22
Democratisation of local AI is key. I've been working on pushing the limits of commercial hardware, squeezing any extra bit possible. My Scientific Agentic AI hareness helped me to reallocate every single bit of it. I rewrote the Kernel, I went down the CUDA rabbit hole until I have been able to explain any bit and any ms of computational power involved in the process pushing the Qwen 30B-A3B from 8 tok7s to 19 tok/s with llama.cpp up to 22.2 tok/s with my project and 109 tok/s on not novel content and speeding up the prefill by 5-9X
Jul 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 23
I was debating when to post this, but I've been using it locally in a variety of situations for several months and I think it's pretty stable (and usable!). There are more features I'd like to add, but I wanted to see if there was much interest before spending much more time on it right now.
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 24
This is a personal project I've been working on and off for the past few years. It's a set of tools that have allowed me to prototype quickly small (and increasingly bigger) kernels, and create userspace programs to interact with them. Supports riscv64, amd64 and i386. The intel port has been tested and used on real hardware, from big dual-socket Xeon machines to an old X220. It is all C, I have plan to make rust bindings for the kernel library. But again, they're plans at this stage. Porting to new architectures is relatively simple, a basic port to riscv took me a couple of weeks of…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →