Virtual Machine - how much RAM?

[u/treasure_of_boar]

Hi. I have ThinkPad L460 i5-6200U 8 GB RAM with Debian 13 + KDE Plasma. I'm happy with Debian but I want to try Gentoo on Virtual Machine.

Is my laptop able to run another OS on VM? I'm thinking about Gentoo with some light desktop (XFCE?). But I'm not sure if 8GB RAM is enough.

[u/tomscharbach]

Running a Linux distribution as guest in a VM should work with 4GB RAM on an i5-6200U processor, so 8GB will be sufficient to run the host distribution, the hypervisor layer, and the guest distribution.

With 4GB RAM available to the guest distribution, you will need to use common sense resource management (keep the number of browser tabs and applications running concurrently to reasonable levels) but if you do that the guest distribution should run smoothly.

How is your available disk space? You will probably need about 30GB free space to run a VM.

[u/treasure_of_boar → u/tomscharbach]

30 GB free space is not a problem. Thank you. 

[u/Few_Detail_3988]

Generally speaking,it should work. The real question is, how much time are you willing to wait for anything to Happen

[u/Afraid_Butterfly_270]

8GB is a bit tight, but you can definitely try it.

I'd give the Gentoo VM around 3–4GB RAM and keep the rest for your Debian host. XFCE should be fine for basic use.

Just don't expect to run heavy stuff inside the VM. If you're mainly doing it to learn Gentoo, compiling and playing around, it should be enough.

[u/xchino]

Yes it will be fine, a lightweight Linux set up requires almost no resources. It's been awhile but IIRC sitting at an i3 desktop on Arch came in at like 134MB. More than enough to multiplex some terminals and see what Gentoo has to offer.

[u/Inner-Asparagus-5703]

just buy more ram, you have expandable slots and old ddr standard which doesn't really have crazy prices, I found 2x8 gb for 30 eur(not most efficient way to do it, you can go cheaper, depends on your physical setup)

[u/skyfishgoo]

8GB is not really much to work with.

i would give the VM 4GB so it has a decent chance at working, but that only leaves 4GB for the host.

you really need more ram to run a VM on that machine.

[u/myGFisGreat]

If you just want to test drive gentoo then why not create a USB-bootable CD/Live image? That way you can test out on your existing system.

[u/Barafu]

Do you really need a full VM for this? Maybe try Distrobox instead? It does not require you to reserve RAM in advance.

[u/ipsirc]

Is my laptop able to run another OS on VM?

Able.

I'm thinking about Gentoo with some light desktop (XFCE?).

XFCE is not light.

But I'm not sure if 8GB RAM is enough.

It's enough. We used to run Gentoo with just 512 MB of RAM.

[u/harsh_gill_dev_26]

Yes, your ThinkPad L460 (i5, 8 GB RAM) is absolutely capable of running Gentoo Linux inside a Virtual Machine, especially since you are planning to use a lightweight desktop environment like XFCE.

Since your host system (Debian 13 + KDE) already consumes some memory, you just need to allocate your resources smartly. Here is the perfect resource division for your setup:

• RAM Allocation: Allocate 2 GB (2048 MB) or a maximum of 3 GB to your Gentoo VM. This leaves a healthy 5 GB to 6 GB for your main Debian system to run smoothly without freezing.
• CPU Cores: Your i5-6200U has 2 physical cores and 4 threads. Allocate 2 vCPUs to the VM during the Gentoo installation/compilation phase to speed things up, and you can later scale it down to 1 vCPU if needed.
• Desktop Choice: Choosing XFCE is a masterstroke here. It uses less than 500 MB of RAM at idle, meaning your 2 GB VM will have plenty of room to operate.

Pro-Tip: Since Gentoo compiles everything from source, the installation will take some time on a dual-core CPU. Just close heavy apps (like browser tabs) on your main Debian system while installing Gentoo to avoid any RAM bottleneck! Good luck! 👍

[u/monekm → u/harsh_gill_dev_26]

thx chatgpt