Ask HN: Environment Setup Lifehacks

Installing the necessary packages and dealing with dependencies, installs that don't work is always the longest part of any project I do (or at least it feels that way). I am running Ubuntu if that makes any difference (thought mirroring the web server would make it easier for deployment). Do you people have any tricks/softwares/OS you use that you find has greatly eased setting up a project's environment? I had a look at Docker and while the store is growing its still missing quite a bit (e.g. react-rails image).