No. Not acceptable. You seem to have forgotten what a VM IS. It stands for VIRTUAL MACHINE. The idea is that you can run the VIRTUAL MACHINE on top of ANY PHYSICAL ARCHITECTURE, and have the applications work, so long as the machine's basic assumptions are followed (i.e. there's some kind of I/O, and a screen capable of displaying graphics, for most of them). A well designed VM can be re-implemented anywhere, and have the software run on it just work. Just look at the Z-machine, or the squeak VM.
The problem with a modern CPU+OS as a VM is that it cannot be re-implemented on other hardware effectively. you can't pull a piece of software designed to run on the x86+unix "VM" and write a VM to make it run on ARM+Windows. Not fast, not in a way that you'd want to use. Try writing native code translation fast enough that you can run Quake3 without even noticing the difference. That's why VMs exist.
The original rationale for the JVM -- "write once, run anywhere" -- no longer exists since nobody downloads applets anymore.
The more sensible technology for making code run on multiple platforms still works quite well. It's called a compiler.
Not if you make OS specific syscalls. Your system has to account for the fact that not everybody runs on the same system. VMs do that, and do it far better than most compilers, when it comes to reliable cross-platform without doing a ton of re-writing.
The problem with a modern CPU+OS as a VM is that it cannot be re-implemented on other hardware effectively. you can't pull a piece of software designed to run on the x86+unix "VM" and write a VM to make it run on ARM+Windows. Not fast, not in a way that you'd want to use. Try writing native code translation fast enough that you can run Quake3 without even noticing the difference. That's why VMs exist.