GNOME OS

With the release of GNOME 3.38.0, we started producing and distributing bootable VM images for debugging and testing features before they hit any distribution repository. We called the images GNOME OS. The name itself is not new, and what it stands for has not changed dramatically since it was introduced, but let’s restate its goals.

GNOME OS aims to better facilitate development of GNOME by providing a working system for development, design, and user testing purposes.

The main feature of GNOME OS is that we can produce a new system image for each commit made in any of our modules. The ability to have these VM images is truly amazing since we are dealing with hundreds of modules that depend and integrate with each other, and with the lower layers of the OS stack. This effort represents a game changer with regards to being able to automate the boot and session initialization, testing design and implementation changes, catching regressions earlier in the development cycle, and many other possibilities.

GNOME OS will also allow the engagement team to more easily create visual assets ahead of the release, present features and raise bug fixes with the free and open source software community at large, and make initiatives like the release video a lot simpler. Journalists will be able to get their hands on the new release of GNOME before the final release.