Well I (a developer) collaborated with an artist (3D modeler) recently and… I did not ask them to install anything.
Instead what I did is a develop a Web drag&drop page. They’d visit it, drag&drop their model and… see if it worked (e.g. visually or running animations) as they expected. That was it.
IMHO finding the boundaries that are important, and thus how to collaborate, is more important than a unique reproducible environment when roles are quite different.
TL;DR: IMHO no, you don’t, instead find how to actually collaborate.
set up by non-programmers (such as artists) […] requires users to learn i3wm and possibly use the command line
Well I (a developer) collaborated with an artist (3D modeler) recently and… I did not ask them to install anything.
Instead what I did is a develop a Web drag&drop page. They’d visit it, drag&drop their model and… see if it worked (e.g. visually or running animations) as they expected. That was it.
IMHO finding the boundaries that are important, and thus how to collaborate, is more important than a unique reproducible environment when roles are quite different.
TL;DR: IMHO no, you don’t, instead find how to actually collaborate.