The day we deleted our VM images
blog.travis-ci.com
blog.travis-ci.com
All developers have to run the test suite before creating a merge request in git.
Then it goes to Travis, where it gets tested across all the platforms we use.
Only if the test passes, does the request get a chance at merging.
As for the difference in the images, it didn't effect us. We already had to work around most systems not having updated versions of gcc. Thus, we were building or installing what we needed.
For others, they may be less lucky. I.e. Relying on docker-compose being installed.