Will Virtual Machine And Ubuntu Eat Up A Lot Of Resources?

[EDLIU]

I have a MacBook Pro(2.66 GHz Intel Core i7, 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3, Apple SSD 128B, NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 512 MB graphics) that is running macOS High Sierra v.10.13.6.

I'm planning to download and install the Virtual Machine(VirtualBox) and Ubuntu.

My questions are:

• Once downloaded and installed the VirtualBox and Ubuntu, will they eat up a lot of computer resources?
  
• Is my MacBook Pro capable of running the VirtualBox and Ubuntu?

Thanks.

 

[mj_]

A virtual machine will only "eat up" as many resources as you assign it to. If you assign your VM one CPU and 1GB of RAM it will use no more than one CPU and 1GB of RAM. If you assign it 4 CPUs and 8GB of RAM it will use up to 4 CPUs and 8GB of RAM. It's that simple.

So yes, your MacBook Pro is perfectly capable of running a virtualized copy of Ubuntu as long as you don't assign more hardware ressources to your VM than your computer is equipped with.

 

[EDLIU]

A virtual machine will only "eat up" as many resources as you assign it to. If you assign your VM one CPU and 1GB of RAM it will use no more than one CPU and 1GB of RAM. If you assign it 4 CPUs and 8GB of RAM it will use up to 4 CPUs and 8GB of RAM. It's that simple.

So how do I setup the VM normally?

How do I setup the VM according to my MBP's Specs?

Thanks.

 

[sgtaylor5]

You should reserve at least 2 cores and half your RAM for macOS; the way you do that is not to give them to the VM’s OS. mj_ is right. There is a screen during initial VM setup to assign resources. Don’t skimp on video memory either. Look at the minimum requirements for the version of Ubuntu you want to use. I’d use the oldest version of Ubuntu (but not too old; Linux is a real bear to setup if it’s too old!) that does what you need it to do. Older version = less resources needed.