I tried: boosting the ram to 20 gig. Adding more CPU cores on top of the other solutions.

I went nuclear. My previous removals of WSL and associated components may have been insufficient.

So, I went nuclear.

Remove all things Windows Hypervisor, every single Windows feature including sandbox, and every component related to it. What a pity since this problem only ever affected Linux and not my Windows VMs.

Completely reinstall VMware Workstation 17 with the repair function.

Select the keyboard driver, because for God's sake I can't handle how that previous keyboard setup was so bad.

For the first time in longer than I can recall, the VM has survived the weekend without freezing.

Conclusion:

It is readily apparent that VMWare has turned into garbage for Linux. At least for my hardware. This is the only explanation for why my Windows VMs worked well but everything Linux kept dying.

VMWare: get your act together for Linux. It's an important OS and I am buying VM Workstation so that I have reliable VMs with it.

Right now, you just suck.