If I rip all my CD's to flac files do I still need a CD transport?

What happens when your hard drive chashes?

That's what backups and restores are for.   ITs' important to not overlook that because eventually every hard drive will fail.  Keeping the CDs is another safeguard but ripping thousands a second time is not a desired use of time.  So unless you want to be forced to go back to a CD player at some point,   have that backup and restore solution in place.  OR at that point punt and go mostly with streaming from services like qobuz, etc.

I have also ripped over one thousand CDs. I have not gotten rid of any of the CDs, I just never play them anymore. They line my walls and help with acoustic dispersion. Also still serve as backups in case ever needed (footnote: be sure to always keep a backup copy of ripped CDs somewhere...ripping is time consuming and once is enough).

As time goes on, there will likely be fewer CDs that I feel I have to still own as opposed to just streaming on qobuz or similar.

I also still have a growing record collection.  I ultrasound clean those and play once to convert to digital and add to my flac format music library.    

if/when in a few years time comes to downsize my home,  I will have to make decisions about what to do with all the stuff I've acculumated over the years.   Lucky to have that problem!

If ripping and streaming is done right, CD player no longer needed.  EAC should be fine (I tried it early on years ago)  but I ended up with dbpoweramp and can only recommend that one accordingly.   It's a waste of time IMHO to spend the time ripping and then streaming if one ends up going back to CD.   Just do it right and welcome to the 21st century!