Definitely the fastest way to run NEXTSTEP is on Intel. You can run it on a VM in modern systems and it flies. I do this, but I prefer running on legacy hardware as it has more personality.
Funny to find a NEXTSTEP discussion in this thread
I'm curious, I still have a NeXTstation (not the turbo version) in storage, and at least ten years ago I had it patched up and in good working condition.
The NeXTSTEP 3.3 CD-ROM (back from the days when there was still the lower case 'e' in the name) and boot/driver disks are still in good condition, too.
How would you make that run in a virtual machine on Intel today (say, VMware)?
As the years went by, I tried it with every virtualization solution that came around, but I stopped doing so a few years back. The kernel always panicked during initialization.
