I also like SliTaz: http://slitaz.org/en, and Slax too: https://www.slax.org/
Oh and puppy Linux, which I could never get into but was good for live CDs: https://puppylinux-woof-ce.github.io/
And there's also Alpine too.
It will increase the size of the VM but the template would be smaller than a full blown OS
Aside from dev containers, what are other options? I'm not able to run intellij on my laptop, is not an option
I use Nvim to ssh into my computer to work, which is fine. But really miss the full capacity of intellij
It'd be best with hardwired network though.