GitHub CI Improvements & Code Cleanup

[tikhomirovd]

Summary

This PR introduces multiple improvements to the CI/CD pipeline and overall code maintenance.

Changes

• Updated setup versions to ensure compatibility with the latest dependencies.
• Updated target versions to support newer Python versions.
• Added skip_install to improve build efficiency.
• Moved to Ruff for better and faster linting.
• Updated CI to use Tox for improved test execution and environment management.
• Added authors section to acknowledge contributors.

Why These Changes?

• Moving to Ruff provides faster linting and better rule enforcement.
• Updating setup and target versions ensures compatibility with modern tooling.
• Using Tox simplifies CI environment handling and improves consistency across builds.

How to Test

1. Run tox to verify the CI pipeline locally.
2. Check that Ruff is correctly handling linting by running ruff check .
3. Ensure all target versions work as expected with tox -e pyXX

Related Issues

• Closes #XXX (if applicable)