Many people use/need Docker, but of course it requires a Linux kernel (often running in a hypervisor if you're running macOS.) VMs can easily eat up a lot of resources, especially memory. Alternately a VM without enough memory will also perform abysmally.

I've also heard complaints about poor performance (vs. native Linux or even WSL on x86 hardware) of x86 Docker images running in emulation on an M1 MacBook Air.