Lol; I’ve done this too. Thankfully not to anything important.

Lxqt, with pcmanfm’s desktop ability turned off. I use the terminal for my file management anyway

I usually have several terminal tabs and web browser tabs open plus a tmux session. Neovim for coding and writing, feh and mpv for viewing media, mpd, supysonic, and minidlna for streaming and playing music.

An immutable distro would be a good choice. They are distros designed to be more resilient against failure. For a gamer, bazzite is a solid choice; otherwise, silverblue.