Incus uses LXC containers under the hood, which is better for development since the containers are made for running systems/os. Docker is best for running applications, but not that great for active development containers (imo).
With LXC any changes you make to the os/filesystem are persisted and there after the container boots up and shutsdown. So I don't have to worry about ephemeral storage or changes being lost. It feels more like a "computer" if that makes sense.
I run incus os, which is an operating system that is made for spinning up containers and VMs. Whenever I have to work on a JS project I launch a new container for development and then ssh into it from my laptop. You can also run incus on your computer without installing it as an operating system.
Containers still have some risk since they share the host kernel, but they're a pretty good choice for protection against the types of attacks we see in the JS ecosystem. I'll switch to VM's when we start seeing container escape exploits being published as npm packages :)
When I first started doing development this way it felt like I was being a bit too paranoid, but honestly it's so fast and easy it's not at all noticeable. I often have to work on projects that use outdated package managers and have hundreds of top-level dependencies, so it's worth the setup in my opinion.
I know we aren't supposed to rely on containers as a security boundary, but it sure is great hearing stories like this where the hack doesn't escape the container. The more obstacles the better I guess.
With LXC any changes you make to the os/filesystem are persisted and there after the container boots up and shutsdown. So I don't have to worry about ephemeral storage or changes being lost. It feels more like a "computer" if that makes sense.