In my experience it Just Works ™️. I spin up a distro/toolbox, compile some software (e.g. Emacs) then run the executable inside the container, and up pops the GUI window.

If you use distrobox, you can even distrobox-export desktop files, at which point a containerised gui application is practically indistinguishable from one installed on the host system

I’ve used Bluefin and Aurora for some light web development. I created a container with toolbox (I assume things would be similar with distrobox) and did what I needed. When I needed, I could run npm start and it was as if I had developed locally.

You should be able to run any executable you like in your home directory. No need for any containers. Try it out with a Hello World app.

Distrobox supports GUI Apps (XServer and Wayland)

It should just work, distrobox supports graphical apps.

Spin up a VM with Aurora, and try to develop a simple GUI app in a distrobox yourself. See what it can do out of the box. I've been practicing getting a problematic VPN installed that way (on Bazzite), so that when I move to the bare metal version, I'll be ready to go.

Also, if you're unsure about distrobox, it's just a wrapper for podman. If you need detailed settings beyond what distrobox can offer, you should look into podman's options.

Dioxus desktop and fullstack worked out of the box. Bevy isn't working because some Nvidia libraries aren't in the container. I might need to switch to a different 'GPU enabled' image.