Just put a Debian or Alpine install in a minimum disk image file, and mount a host machine path as a samba share from inside the VM (i.e. the user can edit the VM code without having to import/export constantly).
kvm/Hypervisor support on windows is patchy, but there are a lot of lower performance virtual machines that can work.
kvm/Hypervisor support on windows is patchy, but there are a lot of lower performance virtual machines that can work.