Wondering if it would be a good idea to setup a VM with this. Setup remote connection, and intellij. Just have a script to clone it for a new project and connect from anywhere using a remote app.

It will increase the size of the VM but the template would be smaller than a full blown OS

Aside from dev containers, what are other options? I'm not able to run intellij on my laptop, is not an option

I use Nvim to ssh into my computer to work, which is fine. But really miss the full capacity of intellij

Ive experimented with several small distros for this when doing cross platform development.

In my experience, by the time you’re compiling and running code and installing dev dependencies on the remote machine, the size of the base OS isn’t a concern. I gained nothing from using smaller distros but lost a lot of time dealing with little issues and incompatibilities.

This won’t win me any hacker points, but now if I need a remote graphical Linux VM I go straight for the latest Ubuntu and call it day. Then I can get to work on my code and not chasing my tail with all of the little quirks that appear from using less popular distros.

The small distros have their place for specific use cases, especially automation, testing, or other things that need to scale. For one-offs where you’re already going to be installing a lot of other things and doing resource intensive work, it’s a safer bet to go with a popular full-size distro so you can focus on what matters.

Isn’t this what GitHub remote envs are (or whatever they call it)?

Never really got what it’s for.

moonlight / sunshine might work if you can't run it locally.

It'd be best with hardwired network though.