Answering my own question for anyone else who might be curious: OrbStack is essentially LXD for macOS, so on Linux, LXD indeed provides an identical workflow.

Answering my own question for anyone else who might be curious: OrbStack is essentially LXD for macOS, so on Linux, LXD indeed provides an identical workflow. In fact, LXD is a bit better. The command line is more powerful, it supports snapshots, the network configuration is more comprehensive, there's a direct access to the host kernel, and the web UI is a nice touch since it can work from a headless VM if needed. This was one of the few things I was missing on Asahi and Linux in general. Feels good.