Sandboxed Development: A Year in a VM

To avoid the pitfalls of a cluttered development environment, the author switched to a virtual machine setup. Running Ubuntu 24.04 within VMware Fusion Pro on macOS, all development tools and extensions reside inside the VM, providing a secure and isolated workspace. While some conveniences like seamless clipboard sharing are lost, the overall experience is smooth, with minimal performance impact on the host machine. The author finds this approach offers long-term stability and security benefits, outweighing the minor inconveniences.