various OS memory usage by VirtualBox recomendations

Rashkae ubuntu at tigershaunt.com
Tue Nov 17 02:06:29 UTC 2009


Vitorio Okio wrote:
> Playing with VirtualBox 3.0.10 I've made a curios observation about 
> recommended Base Memory size in MB for various guest OS:
> 
> 
> IBM OS/2		- 48 to 96 for different incarnations
> 
> BSD 			- 64 to 128 for different incarnations
> 
> Windows XP 		- 192 (twice less of Ubuntu is a surprise to me)
> 
> Debian, Arch Linux, 
> openSUSE, Fedora, 
> Gentoo, Mandriva, 
> Red Hut, Xandros,
> and other Linux 	- 256
> 
> Ubuntu, Turbolinux 	- 384
> 
> Windows Vista & 7 	- 512 (I would be surprised these not to loose).
> 
> Are these numbers really suggestive or their are subjective to VirtualBox?
> 
> Sincerely I was the most surprised of the Windows XP biting all Linux 
> distros, as well by the fact that Ubuntu looses quite significantly to 
> all other distros.
> 
> 

Windows XP *without antivirus* runs well on very little memory.
(Allocated footprint of about 150MB, which is very very lean). A full
gnome desktop, or even Xface, on the other hand, will allocate well over
350MB, and will quickly double that if using any memory hungry applications.

Allocated memory does not mean 'used' memory, as many modern
applications expect to run on demand paging operating systems and will
shamelessly allocate more than they need for breathing space, but it
does give you a good rule of thumb measure.

I haven't tested windows 7 yet,, but just the thought of Vista trying to
pull itself along on 512 mb is laughable.




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