Bash as it is what I'm most familiar with. Having an eye out on the https://amber-lang.com/ that compiles to bash for future scripting purposes.

Indeed, haste makes waste

https://www.revi.cc/ -- found this on another post here. Not sure how to link the post itself, so linking what the post wanted to share. This aims to debloat Windows, and is free and open source.

https://www.byobu.org/ can eschew both screen and tmux Mosh (the mobile SSH client, not linking here) if installing it on the remote server is an option

Every modification and deletion is prevented regardless of the method, be it mv, rm or other commands on the terminal or through a GUI, with or without sudo until sudo chattr -R -i /path/to/directory is performed

I think looking into man chattr is a good option for this

Been a few years since using Emacs extensively. From memory, IRC is a good fit for what you are after for texts and some emojis. No clue regarding multimedia messages.

If IRC is acceptable

Make your own channel on say, Libera chat, set your own rules for how long those messages are retained. Make a user for each of your devices. You are set. I've used ERC a few years under Emacs. Also used GNUS for reading and writing emails from the big providers.

If the MacBook is an Apple Silicon Mn processor one, Asahi is the obvious choice

For other cases

My first suggestion would be to try the distribution you used in WSL

Second would be Linux Mint, can't go wrong with either of Ubuntu edition or the Debian edition

Third would be OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Though a rolling distribution, with easy rollback commands, any unusable state can easily be left behind

+1

And

In the off chance the files are not under git or some other VCS, might be a good idea to add the -b option to backup