About VirtualBox
"required safe graphics option for some reason (black screen during boot otherwise)"
VirtualBox need to be configured with VMSVGA and more than 16 MB VRAM to work correctly.
"the installation takes an insane amount of time"
VirtualBox has an option in "Storage" "use host I/O cache" does better performance accessing host disk. That option disabled the disk access is much slow.
" Anyway, if it freezes again, or fills my whole partition, I'll try with mint instead, at least that one is smaller !"
I use Lubuntu being Ubuntu using LXQT. Is very faster and use less of 400 MB RAM. Perhaps has better video compatiblity.
"I never found why the vbox shared dirs didn't work in ubuntu or in mint this time"
Need select in VirtualBox guest window the menu devices "insert guest addons cd image" and install the drivers.
I has tested the new Raine appimage version 64 bits working correctly.
I see new options to select and Neo Geo game list was updated. That's good.
Thanks very much for doing it.
I known and use your emulator since 2001. 24 years !
All the best to you. Have an nice week.