For a lot of use cases there's no need to boot a Linux VM, since you have a perfectly fine Unix already (though you have to fiddle with the security settings so

For a lot of use cases there's no need to boot a Linux VM, since you have a perfectly fine Unix already (though you have to fiddle with the security settings so macOS Big Sur becomes less annoying). Of course, it's a matter of taste and use case if you prefer one of the Linux package managers to homebrew or MacPorts. I use Macports, which still has some problems with more exotic packages on the M1, but in general seems to be running fairly well. But then, I'm used to compile my own software (such as exotic cross-compilers) and fix compilation problems when I need it. Docker containers are problematic, of course, and I often wondered why macOS never implemented functionality similar to FreeBSD Jails or Solaris Zones. I see both as superior approaches compared to Docker, especially if you can combine them with ZFS. The overhead for running VMs on a M1 Mac seems to be pretty reasonable, though, at least when you buy the 16 GB RAM version (though I also think it's overkill for something like Docker). Apple's hypervisor framework seems to work well and provides standard VirtIO devices to the guest OS, so many popular guest OSes that run on other virtualization solutions should be easy to adapt. The limited RAM expansion capabilities of the M1 Macs is probably the most problematic thing for these use cases.