restoring the whatsapp chat history from its own backup worked every time i tried it.

Maybe the backup was created by an older version of whatsapp than the version you were trying to restore to?

A backup solution like “seedvault” which is built in to lineageOS might help. It includes settings like wifi passwords, app-data and the apk’s.

Since seedvault is integrated as a system app in lineageOS, it doesn’t require a rooted system like titanium.

There are some limitations though, for example some apps don’t allow backups and seedvault respects that setting.

A “database of fingerprints” would only contain checksums

that’s the case for fingerprint readers in phones/laptops

But does that also apply to prints collected for government ID cards?

you would need to have created a snapshot beforehand.

Then you could restore to the last snapshot. But you would need a live system to do that, if your installation is broken

GitLab also uses Ruby on Rails

i’ve used windows and linux on separate drives in the same desktop for ages and it’s been working fine.

I’m using windows mostly for games that aren’t available natively and don’t work via wine/proton

i think this is the best solution

Linux Docker Containers can run on Windows using WSL and if you later migrate the host to linux, you can also run the same container there natively

Deep space probes are already nuclear power sources.

Right now this is mostly a radio isotope heat source and a peltier device to convert the temperature differential to electricity.