GNOME developers working on GNOME OS have received funding from Germany's Prototype Fund to work on creating the GNOME OS "Developer Tool Suite" or also tentatively called their "Test Center" to help in testing experimental applications/libraries in a modern Linux computing world with systemd-sysext, Buildstream, and other newer tech.

In the belated issue of [1]This Week in GNOME , this GNOME OS "Test Center" is described as being akin to Apple TestFlight or the old Mozilla Labs for testing experimental/development software in image-based operating systems. Apple TestFlight is the company's platform for beta testing iOS/macOS apps before being formally released on the Apple App Store.

GNOME OS Test Center aims to make it easier to test the experimental/development versions of software while complying with the image-based operating system constraints. This comes amid an uptick in GNOME developers making use of GNOME OS.

The work is currently in its prototyping phase but those wanting to learn more can do so via [2]this blog post and the funding page at [3]prototypefund.de .

GNOME this past week also saw Glycin picking up OpenEXR image support, support for reading pixel density in JPEG / PNG / TIFF images, and GLib's default network monitoring being improved.



[1] https://thisweek.gnome.org/posts/2026/07/twig-257/

[2] https://modal.cx/blog/image-based-for-developers/

[3] https://www.prototypefund.de/en/projects/gnome-os-developer-tool-suite