All three of those links are very outdated - I do not recommend trying to use any of them.
Can you be more specific about what you are trying to do exactly? I know rclone is confusing to get started on, in part because it does so many different things and the documentation requires some background/outside knowledge.
I host kitchenowl (https://github.com/tombursch/kitchenowl) on a cheap server on the internet for grocery lists, which my household finds to be very intuitive. It also has the ability to pull recipes from an existing url or input recipes manually. I haven't used the recipe functionality myself, but am inclined to start given I already use the app on a regular basis anyway.
I also experimented with / liked mealie (https://github.com/mealie-recipes/mealie/), which is more explicitly a recipe manager and has a nice interface with tagging and different ways to find/organize. Also a self-hosted type services, so it requires a little know-how to get going, but it looks like that dev is launching a hosted version (https://recipinned.com/) at some point as well.
Other couple ideas to consider if job ambitions aren't a major thought:
Nim-lang / Mummy. Neat in being high level like python but compiled and can do low level stuff. Small ecosystem but good interoperability with c and Python. Can also compile to js. Target embedded to web, very flexible.
Also php. Some people say modern php looks more like java. Either way, lots faster than it used to be. Wildly productive language for web stuff. Laravel or Symfony frameworks.
I guess, what I’d like to hear from you all is a way to jump back in as quickly as possible in such a way that it may be a career.
You might check job listings in your region/country to figure out what languages and technology stacks are in high demand, as where you are seems to matter a lot.
I use xmpp. It happens to be a great fit for a private family messaging service. Good interoperability between modern clients. I get that "nobody uses it" is hyperbole, but the internet is a big place and there is room for services without mass market appeal to thrive.
I don't think it was the point of your post necessarily, but I did want to mention a couple of things that might make the Linux switch a little easier - if not for you, anybody else reading and agreeing.
First, distrobox (https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox) is a nifty frontend for podman/docker that I think makes it a little more usable/accessible without having a PhD in devops. Basically helper scripts that create a series of simple CLI commands that let you launch a new environment, enter the new (or old) environment, do stuff in the environment, exit the environment. Keeps your core system's python separated from your development environment(s). Sacrifices the isolation qualities of containers in favor of usability, so probably ok for dev work on a desktop and not so much for production on a server.
Also, there are GUI applications for point and click management of distrobox - I use BoxBuddy, which is available as a Flatpak on Flathub, so again no interference with the core system provided it can run podman and flatpak.
Second, I know the php dev world figured out ways to abstract some docker complexity away with stuff like ddev (https://github.com/ddev/ddev) and lando (https://github.com/lando/lando). I wonder whether other languages have or will build that dev environment in a box abstraction on Docker/Podman/whatever.
Reminder that Obama won Florida. Also that Trump performed worse in Texas in 2016 and 2020 than McCain and Romney in their prior runs. Florida got weird, but Texas has looked close to flipping for a while now.
This is not about quality and costs
It is about quality and cost for the majority of purchasers that worry about meeting a budget. Virtually anybody making purchase decisions on some sort of surveillance system will grapple with that issue. My point is that we all tend to want the best performance for the least cost, and breaking that habit for the less tangible purposes of domestic security or human rights somewhere else is why we will continue to see these articles about Hikvision/Dahua cameras getting deployed at times and in places they probably shouldn't.
Dahua and Hikvision are deployed everywhere because they are high quality and low cost. It poses an interesting dilemma (extending beyond cameras) for the U.S. and allies trying to break dependence on vendors under partial ownership and alleged control of the government in China. Should we subsidize domestic vendors to tilt the scale? Simply banning the high quality low cost option doesn't seem to accomplish much.
Fair, I presume you are correct in how it will be applied. That said, given that Reddit has only ever burned cash, there has to be some connection to gravity...I think?
Probably a good thing, imo. Better than selling data for AI farming and blitzing the site with ads. Hopefully it isn't the start of the entirety of Reddit going behind a subscription wall. Curating private digital communities is a good option.
I'm far from an expert, but I don't know of rclone doing versioning, or a continuous sync like syncthing. Also haven't used proton, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt.
Stage 1 Run rclone config to set up the proton remote. rclone config should take you through a wizard and will eventually ask you to authenticate somehow with the remote. Once that is done and saved, you'll exit the rclone config wizard and be back at the command line.
Then you would run a test command like: rclone ls :
If it worked, you should see a list of files/folders on Proton. If not, you'll have to go back to rclone config and edit the remote to fix whatever went wrong.
Stage 2
Test out copying the folders with a command something like: rclone copy localfile/folder remotename:remotepath
Do some testing to get the hang of the command, but it is pretty straightforward.
Stage 3
I don't know how many files or how big the files are, but I assume not too many and not too big. I also don't know which version of Linux you have, but I assume you have access to systemd, cron, or both.
You'll make a basic shell script that runs the command you practiced in stage 2. Easy peasy, put it in a text file with a shebang at the beginning, make it executable, and give it a go. It should run exactly how it did when you typed the command out manually.
Finally, you will write a systemd timer or a cron/crontab entry to execute that script at some frequency.
So just to summarize: