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I have an assignment that I have to download either Docker or Virtual Box and acquire screenshots. My professor recommended to use Docker if you have a 4GB computer. I installed it and an error message pop up stating I do not have either Windows Education or Windows Pro, he did NOT inform us this in class. I refuse to spend an $100+ I went to watch my professor tutorial video on Virtual Box.

He states in the video, twice, if your computer does not have 8GB, you are potentially risking your computer not to boot up! Again, I have a 4GB laptop, the recommended space I have for Virtual Box is 1965 MB. Is it safe for me to continue to install? I am really nervous and trust me, I will be highly pissed if my computer will crash. I am stuck between on earning a 0 and have a functionally computer or risk on doing the assignment and my computer is basically dead. I e-mailed him, and he replies I have no choice, what!? He said it himself, "Your system might not boot up or takes 10minutes to boot up, the minimum you should have 8gig. If you have less than that then you are trying this at your own risk but you need a machine with a minimum of 8gig to work this properly."

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  • Docker is only less resource-intensive on Linux. On other platforms, it runs in VM (e.g. Windows Hyper-V) anyway.
    – Daniel B
    Sep 30, 2018 at 15:26
  • Alright, but is it safe for me install Docker if my computer can handle 1965 MB? Sep 30, 2018 at 15:29
  • You would not be able to install Docker if HyperV is not available for your version of Windows. Check in Add or Remove Windows Features, whether you are able to find it there or not. If it's there, then enable it. If it's not listed, then you are stuck with VirtualBox
    – Ashishkel
    Sep 30, 2018 at 15:40

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Docker for Windows uses HyperV on Windows 10. But on your edition of Windows, if it's a Home or Student version, HyperV won't be enabled. So you are left with Virtual box option alone. When your set up your VM using Oracle VirtualBox, you could specify the amount of RAM and number of Cpu cores to be used for the VM. You could easily limit this to 2GB and create your VM. And your laptop would just boot up fine. You could also remove Oracle VM from Windows start up. Before shutting down your laptop, you could save the state of your virtual machine, and then turn off the VM. Go ahead and install the Oracle VirtualBox.

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Just wanted to add my voice to the existing answers : There is no way that VirtualBox can prevent your computer from booting. It is your choice, after booting, whether to start VirtualBox or not. Without starting VirtualBox, it won't do anything, and certainly cannot block the boot.

If you allocated a virtual machine too much RAM, it will either not start or may slow down your system to a crawl by causing too many disk swaps. On the worse case, this might force you to reboot so as to get rid of it.

I suggest being critical on the teaching materials coming from this course. The ones you are transmitting here don't impress me at all.

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  • How much should I allocate and what's not impressing you? Sep 30, 2018 at 16:10
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    You may allocate up to 1 GB or even more with no problem. You may test various sizes. If you allocate too little, the virtual machine will be exceedingly slow. If too much, then your computer will slow down. But you don't risk anything. I'm not impressed by wrong or incomplete data.
    – harrymc
    Sep 30, 2018 at 16:16
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You certainly can install VirtualBox on a computer with 4 GB of physical RAM. Just assign your virtual machine a small amount of virtual RAM (eg. 768 MB). As soon as you close the VirtualBox application, your operating system will free the RAM it used.

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