[vladms]

I do not know since when (I am using it for couple of years), but in Arch, it is very simple to have two X sessions (by using "log out" > "switch user") for two different accounts, so switching it's just a Control-Alt-F7 away.

Additionally, one can make the main user part of the group of the development user, so that you can read/write easy in the development user account and it is even easier to share stuff.

[eru]

It doesn't really matter which distribution you use, you can use approximately all the software with any distribution.

They mostly differ a bit in how they are configured and what package manager they use and how they roll out updates. (And in what's installed by default.)

[graemep]

Multiple X sessions has been possible for decades. I think its possible with Wayland too.

You can also start applications as another user so you do not even need multiple sessions.

There are quite a lot of privilege escalation attacks so I am not sure this is sufficiently solid.

[wafflemaker]

It's off topic, and it was also possible for decades, but:

you can connect two sets of mouse, keyboard and monitor to one PC and have two people using it, each running their own X session. The true multi boxing!

[vladms]

Possible and available without any specific configuration on my side (except creating the user) are different things. I know I managed it many years ago with some effort, but nowadays it was just available.

You are correct that it should not be seen as a perfect protection, but considering the effort to set it up I see it as worth it. By seeing in this thread how many people do not use anything similar (ex: containers, separate users, etc), I hope attackers will just be lazy and target those people first, why bother with a local privilege escalation when interesting data is just in the same account?

[calvinmorrison]

You can also use X namespace