Lets say I had worse in linux vertual machines, especially in installers. About a year ago I installed LinuxMint on a real machine (an old laptop of mine). It ran even smoother than windows and it only took about 1 GB of ram.

So, the VM is not lagging. The issue is vmware really hates the pipe wire audio system, which is what almost all distrobutions use now. You could try passing a hardware soundcard to the VM if you have one, or if you feel comphertable using virtual box, try recreating the VM in there.

It's always VMWare that has the audio issues with Linux, but ironically it's the only one that can handle Mac's audio stack and not die like Qemu does.

just curious, is there anything different in virtual box and vmware? Don't use them but I've heard they exist