About ArchiveOS

Our mission
ArchiveOS.org – Archive of Operating Systems mission is saving the great job of many great people whose created Open Source and/or Freeware distributions/operating systems.
The systems we archive are based on Linux, BSD, DOS, Solaris, and other, independent technology.

Why we do that?
The most important is to save the systems and let the next generations of users find them, try them and learn about them as much as possible.
The old systems should not be used for daily usage on production workstations, but can be used for education purpose.

Which ones?
The most important criterias are:
1. The system has been published under a license which lets us offers it to share and download.
2. The system has been not under development more than 1 year or
3. The system’s developer announced finishing and/or closing down the project or
4. The system’s developer stopped development a version of the system so we can archive it, but other versions are still under development
5. The system’s image is available to get so we can move it to our download server and create a web page.

Exceptions
You can be surprised, that an active OS is listed at ArchiveOS.org, but it happens. Why?
1. An OS been added even its development is active, to provide the first ever iso image, for example
2. An OS was not under development in the time of adding it to ArchiveOS.org, but a new or old developer re-activated the project bringing it back to life
3. Development of an OS was quiet, means no new releases for long time, but the development is/was doing in “a shadow” (not sure it was or not active)
In cases like that, if I got message or find out that a non active project is active, additional info about activity is added to the project’s archive page.

How much is it?
All the archived systems are free of charge as the original developer(s) was(were) offering before so we don’t charge you.
Anyway we have to pay bills to keep ArchiveOS alive so donations are warm welcome.

You can propose your, not being under development operating system any more or give us a tip about another, not archived OS yet via the community pages.

Check statistics out of ArchiveOS.org

Sister projects
ArchiveOS sister project is ArchiveApp which archives present and former applications for any device, and ArchiveGame as well.