If possible, buy an old Thinkpad for 50-100 bucks and install on a real hardware for the best experience.

I have no experience with any Mac hardware, but Virtualbox has improved a lot during the years. It won’t have accelerated graphics, but still fast and responsive.

Which distro ships with zsh?

A file picker which doesn’t hurt my brains. I’m also looking to avoid tinkering as much as possible with CosmicOS + Virgo laptop.