I have considered doing full-disk-encryption with Veracrypt or using Bitlocker, but don't trust both of them, since I had a drive corrupted by Veracrypt and couldn't get back into the filesystem. As for bitlocker: I don't trust Microsoft to protect my files since they are an NSA Prism partner and probably have Bitlocker backdoored. My threat model is such that: if my filesystem can be accessed by NSA, then it can also be accessed by smaller threat actors with little effort.
In terms of Linux: I can do partial disk encryption with LUKS and have all my intellectual property secured with that, but what tools should I be using in Linux? I prefer the JAM stack, so apart from VSCodium and XAMPP, what other tools should I be installing?
If you've already made your choices for code editing environment (and extensions) and a specific backend stack, what remains is some front-end specific extensions for your chosen browser (Firefox or Chromium) like Web Developer, Firebug, and Postman.