Yeah, GPU passthrough is pretty tough to get with VMs as well, let alone something very tailored to graphics needs like that. So I can understand if you need that to work why it’s a turn off. Well, VMs being slower than the host machine is just a real tradeoff that happens. You can try using less graphics/ram/cpu heavy systems like Xubuntu/Lubuntu (although to be fair even Kubuntu is pretty lightweight now). But part of it is how much RAM you give it. If you have the spare ram for it, give it as much as you can. I have 32gb of ram and yet rarely break using 10gb of it so if I am running a single VM I usually give it 12gb of ram at minimum. Also depending on what you’re using for your VM you could give the VM more cpu cores to use, but that will in turn speed it up (although depending on the load may also slow down your host as it loses access to cores). Giving it enough ram, enough cores, and putting it on the next M.2 (pulling the OS of an HDD is slow af) you get if there’s enough room. Those are all things that will bring up speed.