EndeavourOS has an i3 version. That’s how I started i3, and I’m still running it after almost 2 years. Comes pretty well set up in my opinion.

Manjaro has me dying, lol.

I would recommend learning vim in that case. I’m not sure about the availability of vi(m)/emacs on the systems you remote into, but if I was a betting man I’d say vi is more available than vim is more available than emacs. But if you learn vim and are stuck with vi one time it’s still better than nano (for me, but I’m sure you’re quite good with nano). Another benefit that extends outside of your text editing experience is that vim motions are offered out of the box for a lot of linux utilities (less) with no setup, or can be trivially added (tmux), which gives you familiar keybinding almost everywhere as well as an improved ergonomic (and likely speed) advantage.

Nice photo!

Dying. Works every time first time and they never come back.

This game informed a lot of my early musical tastes and probably contributed to my current tastes in one way or another.

This one?