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Is 8GB enough for virtual machine?
- Thread starter hajime
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I can afford 16GB but as I don't like the keyboard, this time I plan to buy a machine just good enough to get the job done and perhaps in the near future invest the money on a DYI workstation.
If the keyboard is that bad, buy 16GB and an external keyboard for extended work sessions. Or get a Thinkpad X1 Carbon or XPS 15.
Thanks. I have bought an extended keyboard and a monitor already.
X1 Carbon 6th gen has heat and fan issues. Otherwise, it could be a better one due to a better keyboard and longer battery life.
8Gb will not be sufficient, get 16Gb
macOS will need room to function as well, and with 8Gb, thats a puny 4Gb for macOS and 4Gb for LinuxVM and you can't upgrade it later.
16Gb.
No question.
You can run a VM on 8 Gb, I've done it. Neither OS/X nor the VM will be especially happy about it, but it will work. I strongly recommend 16 Gb if you are running VM's, but it's not absolutely essential.
I was using VirtualBox, can't speak to VMware or Parallels from experience but I suspect they would be about the same.
I was using VirtualBox, can't speak to VMware or Parallels from experience but I suspect they would be about the same.
Do you need to run both at the same time with a lot of apps? If so, Then you might have a problem. People on here overestimate ram usage.
It depends entirely on what work you will be doing (and how much RAM you need to allocate to the virtual machine).
If you just want to try out/learn to use Linux, an 8GB Mac will be more than adequate (I think the default allocation of RAM to Linux, if you auto-install it on Parallels, is about 2GB). If you want to do serious work on Linux then it will probably need more RAM allocated to it, and if you then want to work on Mac OS at the same time then things may start getting sluggish.
In short, if you already have an 8GB Mac than you don’t need to upgrade in order to get started with Linux in a VM. If you’re buying a new Mac and want to use virtual machines alongside Mac applications then it is probably sensible to go for a 16GB machine if you can afford it.
“How much memory do I need to run X?” Is always a difficult question - pretty much anything will run and do the basics on an 8GB machine, it all depends on the size of the images/movies/orchestras etc. that you need to work with.
I have 16GB on my iMac. I allocate 2GB for an Ubuntu VM. It works fine for what I use it for. But, I’m mostly just running terminal commands, maybe an FTP client and lightweight work like that. Personally as mentioned if you intend to run VMs I’d go for 16GB.
It all depends on what you use it for.
I have VMS running oracle databases, and PeopleSoft applications. There's no graphical front ends, just the terminal but I can only run a single instance as each VM has a memory requirement of at least 6GB and since I only have 8GB that means I don't have enough to run more then one VM. Windows does not like two 6GB Vms running with only 8GB of ram, trust me, bad things happen
It seems that in Parallels, the user must "upgrade" (meaning pay a yearly subscription fee) to allocate more than 8 Gb to a VM. Am I wrong about that?
Yeah - you need the "Pro" version for that which is subscription only :-(
Also, the one-off license non-Pro version needs upgrading about once every two years to be compatible with the latest Mac OS (and sometimes Windows/Linux) versions (not quite as bad as some people make out, but still an issue).
In perspective, its a complex bit of software that does need continual tweaking to keep up with host and guest OSs that are continually changing, and expecting lifetime free upgrades for a one-off sub-$100 purchase. I don't really have a problem with the every 2 years paid (discounted) upgrade but the subscription rates are a bit greedy.
Has anybody done a (recent) comparison of Parallels vs. VMWare Fusion (...who also have a pro version but still do one-off licensing, and you apparently don't need Pro for >8GB VMs).
(I used VMWare Workstation to run Linux and old Windows versions on a PC about 10 years ago - its worth pointing out that, at the time, that cost about $300...)
If you simply don't like the feel of the keyboard, give it a chance. I hated hated hated it when I first got it. I hated it so much that I slapped a previous generation Apple Bluetooth keyboard on top of the butterfly keys when I did use it as a laptop. The flat profile was amazingly useful in allowing me to "anchor" a Bluetooth keyboard onto it without the keyboard sliding around.
Then I started using the MBP keyboard a little at a time because I left the external keyboard in the other room. I started getting used to it and I actually began to like it. There are still some things that really annoy me about it, but as far as the feel goes, I now like it better than every other MBP keyboard before it.