It is like Virtualbox only, but exclusively for apple silicon https://mac.getutm.app/

Yes, I have used the arm version.

And what about the data? What is the best way to manage them?

Ya perfectly, without any issues. Because the distro uses directly MBP's wifi ethernet style.

I used to have issues when I tried to run fedora and ubuntu, hence the title.

Yes, I have an extra copy of the data in an external hard drive.