Alternatives
Products that do what Resurrecting Infocom's Unix Z-Machine with Cosmopolitan does
I recently brought Infocom's original UNIX z-machine source code back to life on modern systems. The modified source code, instructions on usage, a build of the z-machine, and examples of embedded game executables are available. There is also a detailed write-up about the state of the original source code, the porting process, and the invaluable role Justine Tunney's Cosmpolitan project played in bringing the Zork trilogy (and more) to Windows/Mac/Linux/bsd for arm/x86 machines over the course of a lazy Sunday.
- 1WA
Hi HN community, I’m Zach, founder and CEO of Warp, and am excited to show you Warp, a fast Rust-based terminal that’s easy to use and built for teams. As of today, Warp is in public beta and any Mac user can download it. It works with bash, zsh, and fish. The terminal’s teletype-like interface has made it hard for the CLI to thrive. After 20 years of programming, I still find it hard to copy a command’s output; I always forget how to use `tar`; and I always have to relearn how to move my cursor. To fix fundamental accessibility issues, I believe we need to start innovating on the terminal,…
2022 · warp.dev
- 2IW
I grew up on the Infocom games and when microsoft actually open-sourced Zork 1/2/3 I really wanted to figure out how to use LLMs to let you type whatever you want, I always found the amount language that the games "understood" to be so limiting - even if it was pretty state of the art at the time. So I figured out how to wrap it with Tambo.. (and run the game engine in the browser) basically whatever you type gets "translated" into zork-speak and passed to the game - and then the LLM takes the game's output and optionally adds flavor. (the little ">_" button at the top exposes the…
Jan 2026 · infocom.tambo.co
- 3OS
2019 · github.com
- 4MS
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
- 5MF
Hi there! I've been on-and-off working on TacOS for a few months, which follows some UNIX-derived concepts (exec/fork, unix-style VFS, etc) and is now able to run a port of Doom, with a fairly small amount of modifications, using my from-scratch libc. The performance is actually decent compared to what I expected. Very interested to hear your thoughts. Thank you!
2025 · github.com
- 6IM
Hi, As a 8-bit C64 game coder in eaarly 90ties and currently mostly FE-focused dev, decided to give a go to a simple retro game archive. This is purely fun project - so i decided to post it to HN, mayne it'll resonate :)
2023 · polishpixels.com
- 7
- 8MP
I have been working on this game somewhat sparsely for the past three years or so. However, it is still in a very early stage, and there is a lot of work to do. One of my friends encouraged me to post about it here, since he felt people might find interesting how I don’t use any libraries for it. The game can be played on a browser by virtue of WebAssembly. There are native ports using either MiniFB or SDL2, but you have to build those yourself. I decided to write the game in C because I feel like it is a simple language that a lot of people can understand well enough, and I didn’t think I…
2023 · zamfofex.neocities.org
- 9OS
2017 · github.com
- 10CG
This was an interesting porting project for a few reasons (IMO): - The original game is/was awesome and, from a programming perspective, a wonder -- smooth scrolling arcade game on a 128kb Mac in 1984... - The port was done with a lot of help from AI (mostly Claude Code, but some Gemini CLI as well). I'm a programmer; it wasn't vibe-coded. But I couldn't have done the port of 68k assembly without it. FWIW, Claude seemed better at actually porting the 68k assembly but Gemini was better at finding bugs. YMMV. - I love Redux and Redux Toolkit for state management. For the port, I put the…
Sep 2025 · continuumjs.com
- 11IR
Recently, I managed to recover some of my earliest work from the ZX Spectrum era from an old audio cassette. It is a mini-game, that I created as a teen, called "Atomix," written in BASIC with a mix of Z80 assembly — some of which I coded myself, while other parts were disassembled from existing games. I put the game in an modern emulator and recorded a screencast. See the video in my linkedin post: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7288665...
2025
- 12MM
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
- 13AA
2024 · github.com
- 14AC
I've been curating, with help from the redbean Discord community, a list of cosmo related things. Projects, ports, docs, blog posts, really whatever we think would be cool to centralize. You might not realize how many things have been ported, so I wanted to share: - https://github.com/shmup/awesome-cosmopolitan#ports If you don't know about Cosmopolitan Libc in general, start here: - https://github.com/shmup/awesome-cosmopolitan#cosmopolitan
2022 · github.com
- 15TU
This is a site that maps the references on Gary Overacre's 1980s UNIX Magic poster to short write-ups with sources. I posted an earlier version about a year ago [1]. Since then I rewrote some of the annotations, added deep-linking to individual markers and a frame/sidebar view, gave the site a terminal-style redesign, and fixed historical inaccuracies (daemon etymology, nroff origin, B language vs. Multics, etc.). Contributions and comments welcome; each marker is a GitHub issue. site: https://unixmagic.net [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43019136
Apr 2026 · github.com
- 16IB
You know that old TI calculator you used in high school, then put in a box and forgot about? Have you ever wished you had an operating system for your calculator with preemptive multitasking, dynamic memory management, a tree filesystem conforming to the FHS, and all the comforts of Unix? Well, good news: that's totally a thing that exists. I've been working on my kernel for about three and a half years now and I'm looking for new contributors to help out. It's written entirely in z80 assembly, and it's both challenging and fun to work on. There's an IRC channel for contributors or people…
2014
- 17IM
I spent the past few weeks making an open source cloud code editing environment with an AI copilot and multiplayer collaboration! It's fully self-hostable in 5-10 minutes. There's a lot of minor improvements to be made, and some are already listed in the Github issues. Let me know what you think and feel free to try it out.
2024 · github.com
- 18UF
A Unix-inspired shell and RAM filesystem for the Commodore 64 (6502 assembly)
Feb 2026 · github.com
- 19NP
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
- 20LS
Libredesk is a 100% free and open-source helpdesk, a Zendesk/Intercom alternative. Backend in Go, frontend in Vue + shadcn/ui. Unlike many "open-core" alternatives that lock essential features behind enterprise plans, Libredesk is fully open-source and will always stay that way. Last year I posted v0.1.0 here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43158166 A year later, it's omni-channel. Alongside email, you can drop a live chat widget (beta) onto your website and handle both channels in the same agent UI. The chat widget, CSAT pages, and email templates are all…
Apr 2026 · libredesk.io
- 21WC
A friend and I built this as a side project to help us collaborate on files with our agents. Claude / Codex kept outputting .md and .html files which are great until we needed to share them, so we built this small website to help with that. Agent can either use an HTTP + Skill or an MCP which also uses MCP Apps to add widgets to Claude Desktop / Mobile chat. Would love any feedback and hopefully this helps someone else as it did us!
Jun 2026 · workplane.co
- 22IR
Apr 2026 · github.com
- 23CL
Hey HN, this is a side-project I've been working on for my senior year independent work in CS. Would appreciate any comments or feedback. www.aperator.com Thanks!
2012
- 24OC
I am very new to this. I have tried to follow to follow your guidelines, but I'm not sure if I have got it right. The URL point to release notes which give a brief overview of the project including its history. As production code, this is still early stage - but I think it works well enough to be useful to people other than myself.
2023 · github.com
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