16GB vs 32GB RAM for VMs: 32GB wins for multitasking VMs without lag

32GB gives you breathing room to run two decent VMs and still browse the web, while 16GB forces constant swapping. Each VM needs 4–8GB to be usable, plus VMware or VirtualBox eats host RAM. If you only run one tiny Linux VM for testing, 16GB might be fine, but most experimenters will thank Future You for 32GB.