@nand all the time. As far as your networking issue I suspect you need to setup a private bridge for your VM and then a second "router" like device to connect to the VPN. I suspect it's easier to just run Tails though or embed your VPN connection in the guest machine.
@nand yes, I use AQEMU, very very user friendly GUI for Qemu which works similarly to VirtualBox. I am also looking for VirtualBox replacement until I found AQEMU.
@nand Yes, I use it on my laptop to run a completely separate system when I have to use zoom. My wife runs VirtualBox on her laptop for the same reason, and I seem to have fewer issues, so I must swap hers over. I use virt-manager, but based on @ademalsasa suggestion will give aqemu a go.
The only thing I'd prefer is the way VB allows effective bridging of a wireless interface.
@nand I wouldn't call the GNU General Public License a "proprietary garbage" though. :)