You might give GNU Guix a try, combination of guix time-machine and guix shell -C should give you the exact same environment each time without fear of being aff

You might give GNU Guix a try, combination of guix time-machine and guix shell -C should give you the exact same environment each time without fear of being affected by the rest of the system (with the obvious exception of the linux kernel). And it seems to be popular in science circles.