Thanks for all your responses! I should have mentioned that pneumatics and hydraulics are off the table at this time.
Right now we’re thinking of manufacturing a flexible seal that can travel with the rod while maintaining a seal with the housing. That might be over engineering a bit, but we’ll be doing some testing this week to see how it goes!
I did as well for my daily driver school laptop and I’ve been loving it so much. I’m considering switching my desktop to Linux as well over the summer, or dual booting at the very least