So I want to start using Ubuntu, but I don't want to install it, but rather use it inside VirtualBox. I already have Ubuntu installed that way, but I want to get the most out of it and I'm not sure how can I do it (amount of RAM and stuff like that). I would like your advice for doing this and also integrating the virtual machine with my Windows archives.
I have 16Gb of RAM, Intel Core i7-6700 3.40GHz, a 250Gb SSD and 4Tb HDD.
When running Ubuntu in a virtual machine there is always a performance drop due to virtualization.
This has considerably improved with modern CPUs that can help with hardware optimized virtualization (VT-x for Intel). This needs to be enabled in the host BIOS, not only to be able to run a 64-bit guest but also for performance.
Like on bare metal all hard drive read and write access is much faster on an SSD than on a conventional hard drive. But you may not need all space on that SSD. Consider to split you installation on two virtual disks (VDI) where a smaller VDI holding the OS is on the SSD but the HOME directory is on a second VDI on the conventional hard drive. Make the VDIs dynamically growing for the least real space needed.
Install the guest additions in your guest to take advantage of the host hardware graphics acceleration.
Settings for CPU cores or RAM can be changed any time later after installation. It can be adapted on demand, depending on the tasks we wish to perform in the guest, or the tasks we still need to perform in the host.
As a rule of thumb use about half of the RAM, and half of the CPU cores for the guest. If you use more RAM for the guest leave enough RAM for the host OS to be able to still operate smoothly without swapping (at least 2 better 4 GB for Windows). If you use all CPU cores for the guest you should define an execution cap to leave some power to the host.
For more tweaks in case of weaker hardware see:
