What operating system would achieve the best performance on x86 from within Qemu or Virtualbox?
I only need to use a handful of programs regularly: tmux, vi(m), curl, a package manager (mainly to install libraries), gcc/clang, git, etc.
I don't need X or a graphical environment, although I'd prefer a minimalistic one as long as performance isn't sacrificed, mainly because terminal emulators (esp. mrxvt) are faster than virtual terminals.
I'm leaning toward Gentoo, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonflyBSD, and FreeBSD right now (in that order).