I'd wager it's a volume thing. Not enough Linux customers asking for SRIOV support, so it's not worth spending the money to enable driver support for it. The Fortune 500 companies that you mention should specifically ask for SRIOV support on linux mainline when making purchases. Unfortunately, that's the only way to make sure we have support upstreamed.
The silver lining seems to be that more and more things are moving into the firmware, and it's entirely possible that SRIOV could be supported through that in the future. But till then, I doubt it's going to happen.
Because implementing designing/manufacturing/validating SR-IOV HW is expensive. It's not something that would be useful as a differentiating feature for most consumer grade HW.
Not quite, some ISPs lock down their routers and you can't expose the relevant ports publically. That's when Cloudflare Tunnels combined with a reverse proxy save the day.
Another really useful service is being able to protect everything behind a SSO like Github, allowing at least the most basic form of intrusion prevention that would secure your homelab from the majority of attacks.
I've been in the same place you are now. I completely agree with the need for a healthy routine to be able to keep depression at bay and not having a environment to socialize robs you of key experiences we all need to have in our youths in order to be well adjusted later in life.
Having said that, you're in a great place to make a few key changes that might help! I moved to another country and learnt a new language and a whole new culture when I was in the same place as you!
Perhaps that's not a option for you, but maybe you could travel to a new city for a week or two! Trial out a few places and see what fits you. It takes a bit of effort and persistence, at the cost of routine, but having a fresh start might be the thing that gets you out of this.
Edit: You might want to look up Croissant to go and meet other remote co workers, there's a fair few of us around the world ;)
Congratulations on getting to the front page ;)