The original post: /r/linux by /u/Phydoux on 2024-10-13 01:06:14.

I’ve been running Linux in a VM just to use the browser. Basically, I was testing out how much RAM I could use before it would just crash (2GB in a VM ran for about 8 hours before it crashed). I was basically just using it as a Web Browser server really. It has been working great (this VM has 8GB of RAM and has been running about 16 hours now. I’ve watched YouTube videos, done Reddit stuff, etc… everything I normally do on my regular PC).

It’s a little more responsive than my main host. I run multiple browsers on it (YouTube is kind of useless on the VM because the audio isn’t working. I’ve got something set wrong I think). But I have played videos just to make sure it won’t crash. I played like 2 videos in the 2GB RAM VM and it crashed. I also had Reddit open and a search tab open as well. Yeah, it was pretty heavily used. The swap file still had over half the ram space left (1.5GB out of 3GB swap) but it still crashed. This is kind of why it’s not imperative for me to have a swap file on my system.

But overall, with this 8GB RAM VM… It’s kinda nice. I gave it 120GB of drive space but I’ll bet I can cut it down to about 40-60GB I think. I mean, if all I’m using it for is a browser, that should be plenty.

So, this has been a fun experiment and something I’m considering keeping going. And if I can fix the audio issue in this VM, That would be awesome!

And yes, I know, using 60GB of my main computers disk space seems like a waste and it may even be impractical. And I think I’m using more RAM than normal on my main system but I’m currently using 2229MB of RAM in this VM which is about what I’d be using on my regular system. Now I’m using 11GB of RAM. But ya know what? I’ve got 64GB total in this machine so… RAM UP PC!!!