It's a really bad idea to toot ones own horn before the horn is ready but I have (always have had) the same problems. I finally started using Docker with ssh -

It's a really bad idea to toot ones own horn before the horn is ready but I have (always have had) the same problems. I finally started using Docker with ssh -X so that my host laptop just acts as a X display and the Docker instance is what I "really" work in. The advantage is that I use docker files (dead simple templates) as my configuration - it's there in git right now. I change it when the thing I am doing gets over the hump of me bothering to add it to git - this means I don't end up with the usual cruft cluttering up my config - things only stay in my machine on reboot if I add them to the templates (which is very simple but at least forced me to think "Do I really want that again"? Secrets are on a usb stick which means I sometimes get to do this on my wife's Mac - assuming I can chase children off it. I put together http://www.github.com/mikadosoftware/workstation http://www.github.com/mikadosoftware/workstation it does all this and sorta kinda walks you through set up. Someone has sent a pull request with a good fix for ssh passwords but I have put it off thinking I will just get this "last thing here working" and frankly I am ashamed enough of ignoring free contribs that I will probably add it tomorrow on the commute I am seriously thinking of migrating it over to nix as that does look cool but really I have lots of projects - this one I just use every day. Edit actually the two biggest advantages are - that I have a latest and next instance - I can rebuild one while working on the other so instead of rebuilding and reconfiguring every two years its every two days - and I always have a spare instance to work on if the build goes south. I am guessing this will mean moving to a new laptop (yeah one day) will hurts less for the same reason daily releases hurt less than quarterly releases - I am starting to ratchet up - as it's all scripts in theory my security and other bits and pieces just go up and to the right.