I agree on most points, except perhaps for the expectation of compute and RAM since NAS = ‘network attached storage.’
I’ve had a HP N40L for 15 years and every time I see the current offerings I hope I don’t have to look for hardware soon; it’s been such a great homelab server. After FreeNAS > TrueNAS Core, I now roll my own FreeBSD. It felt like a great leap into the deep end going from GUI to CLI, but I haven’t once looked back.
I’ve had a HP N40L for 15 years and every time I see the current offerings I hope I don’t have to look for hardware soon; it’s been such a great homelab server. After FreeNAS > TrueNAS Core, I now roll my own FreeBSD. It felt like a great leap into the deep end going from GUI to CLI, but I haven’t once looked back.