AMD has been open source since late 2017?

I use Alpine Linux for all my dockers, small and fast.

Becoming fat/obese

Ah they sold boards with the bugged versions of the i225? Mine had the rev3 chip which is supposed to have fixed the issues with the older revisions.

I have a b650e-i

That’s not good, I actively try to avoid realtek cards since they are unreliable in linux. I have an asus board with an Intel nic but I haven’t had these issues.

2.5" disks are SMR, you don’t want that in a raid.