I believe the only way to firmware up an Xbox controller is on an Xbox or through the Xbox Accessories app on Windows. I've been using my work laptop to update my Xbox controllers.
As an alternative, some of the 8bitdo controllers are in LVFS, and I've heard the PlayStation Controller Firmware Updater works in WINE for DualShock and DualSense controllers.
Steam is putting out the end of year summaries. You should see it in Steam.
When you see the Windows and Apple icons on a game, that indicates native Windows and MacOS support. The Steam logo is native SteamOS/Linux. You'll also see a "SteamOS/Linux" section on the system requirements.
I'm not aware of any that would run all of it at the same time. Most of this equipment is built for use with a server CPU and motherboard, which obviously has more PCI-E lanes. The Zen 5 consumer CPUs only have 28 PCI-E lanes, so unless you buy a motherboard that breaks out more through the use of a PCI-E switch, that's all you'll get.
WAN would be the Internet uplink port. A 2.5G WAN port is a 2.5 gigabit Ethernet port. 2.5 gigabit and o a lesser extent 5 gigabit Ethernet are a standard that's becoming rapidly available on a lot of hardware. OP is stating that for a device shipping near the end of 2024, a new router that is shipping with only 1 GbE instead of 2.5 GbE is a problem.
Not really. WAN has always been WAN. Wireless has always been WLAN.
That's right. So on the top backplane, you'll connect the Oculink ports to the Oculink outfitted HBA. One port per drive.
For the bottom 8 drives, it looks like you'll have one miniSAS HD connector per four drives, plus another for the rear bays. I initially thought they were plain SATA and would go to the motherboard. But it looks like you'll need a third connector - so you'll want a 16 port HBA (Supermicro AOC-S3216L-L16iT).
Reading through all the documentation I can, it looks like you'll have the option to run all the bays as NVME or SAS disks. The controllers and layouts I've listed are for running four bays as NVME, and the other 10 as SAS.
If I understand the ports you have - Supermicro AOC-SLG3-4E4T for the U.2 bays and a Supermicro AOC-S3008L-L8e for the SAS bays. You could replace the SAS card with a Dell HBA 330 as well. The Dell PERC cards that support NVME storage don't appear to have the Oculink ports your backplane has.
Centralized logging like Graylog or Grafana Loki can help with a lot of this.
Automate the Boring Stuff with Python
Free to read on the authors website - https://automatetheboringstuff.com
7000 series run AVX512 as two 256 bit data paths, while the 9000 series has a native 512 bit data path for AVX512.
You must have had a real sweetheart deal on VMware then. Proxmox is cheaper than VMware even under the old pricing. You also don't have to buy the "Standard" subscription. There are cheaper ones.