For developing on Linux, you can sometimes use a bootable/LiveCD instance of Linux( I like Lubuntu ).
I’ve built custom bootable systems for years with some just for the purpose of software development. I also do it for workshops so everyone is on the exact same page.
And you can enable persistance( save your work ) in a number of ways with the simplest being saving to the same USB thumb drive you booted from. I will often mount a partition from the hard disk in the laptop and create a directory specifically for working from for data I want to save between sessions.