I think you need to provide more details on what VM software you’re using. On VirtualBox what you describe is very noticeable, and it didn’t have that delay in older versions. So it could be just an issue with that VM software and not a general “traditional VMs” issue.
Yup I'm asking about VirtualBox mainly, I just don't understand what the heck it's doing during that time that takes so long. Although I don't recall other VMs (like say, Hyper-V) being dramatically different either (ignoring WSL2 here).
Are you just guessing or have you actually seen the delay I'm talking about disappear as a result of this (or as a result of anything else for that matter)? Because I've already done this (yes, entirely, even the kernel mode drivers) and it's definitely not the issue.
There was a release of subversion back in the day that reduced the number of files that were opened during a repo action like pull, and the number of times any one file got opened. On Linux it ran about 2-3x faster. Very nice change.
On windows it was almost 10x faster. On the project where this change was released, my morning ritual was to come in, log on, run an svn pull command, lock my screen and go get coffee. I had at least ten minutes to kill after I got coffee, if the pot wasn’t empty when I got there.
Windows is hot garbage about fopen particularly when virus scanning is on.