What is the benefit of everything being web based over setting up automatic building of traditional packages for existing OS or building containerized packages EG flatpak.
If your objection is that it's inefficient and sometimes leads to bad quality output, I'd agree. But it's the option with the least friction so people gravitate towards it, we might as well make it work better.
- incredibly easy to setup (only a browser is needed) and use everywhere. Even management compatible.
- can be automated easily with ansible and/or docker
- remote pairing without a third-party cloud in between
- plug-ins just work even when being used remotely
- headless chrome can be proxied to the webview of vscode (a real browser running remotely in your browser)
Almost everything mentioned can be done with the tools you suggested BUT IMO it is not as smooth then just using vscode. This is coming from an arch (using arch BTW) / i3 guy.